Passion Pizza
by Cat In My Fridge
Summary: Lelouch promises to no longer be stingy with C.C.'s pizza expenses when he meets the local pizza boy. Suzaku/Lelouch, pizza boy!AU. WIP.
1. Sausage

**00 - Passion Pizza - 00**

_A Code Geass multi-part_

_that was inspired by a kink meme prompt,_

_and also goes by the name, 'that wretched pizza boy!AU thing.'_

* * *

Lelouch stopped at his door step to shake some of the rain off his umbrella, shuddering when a few stray drops managed to sneak their way below his coat and run down his back. He fished out his keys, then stepped into the welcoming womb of his home that greeted him with the warmth of the hot breath of a beast, or some slightly less nauseating metaphor, and -

Well, of course, _and_ C.C. shuffling toward him on bare feet, _tap-tap-tapping_ like a cat, and greeting with a deadpan, "Credit card?" As if that was all the information Lelouch needed or was entitled to know.

Which, in her world, it probably was.

Lelouch groaned. "Again?"

C.C. blinked. "There's a new pizza place that just opened down the street." She waited expectantly. "_Passion Pizza._"

Lelouch searched his memory. "_That_ place?" Now that she mentioned it, he had seen it, sprinting home beneath his sizzling umbrella, rain pouring so hard the drops seemed to rain _up_ and at him like wet missiles from the streets. Just a glance from the side, really; garish paint pulsating headily out from between the bank and the mom-and-pop supermarket to his right.

_Passion Pizza_, in bright red letters.

He hadn't given it much thought, other than distantly thinking that the name was just the slightest bit kinky - and then promptly forgetting about it, to proceed his trek back home.

Lelouch rolled his eyes, and bent down to remove his shoes. Foregoing the obvious - "I've just come home and _that's all_ you can think of?" - Lelouch muttered, "Pizza is expensive."

C.C. blinked as if the word 'expensive' didn't ring a bell. Apparently, in his cousin's mind, 'expensive' didn't immediately cause a chain reaction in her brain that followed the neurons all the way to the neon-bright, blinking sign of, '_therefore cannot buy._'

"So?" she asked, just to confirm _that_ little theory. "You can easily afford that. You make good money."

"Which is exactly the point," Lelouch said, shaking rain drops off his head. "I make good money. _You_ don't. Remind me again why _I_ should support your gluttony?"

C.C. blinked. Then shrugged.

Any other cousin would probably have said, "Because I'm family?"

C.C. only cocked her head as if this was all a really, really stupid question, and drawled, "Because if you don't I'm going tell daddy dearest you catch for the other team?"

Shame was a hot current pulsing in his cheeks. He stood up straight. "I do _not_."

"Right," C.C. said, in the a way you usually only reserve that word for humoring eccentrics who claim to have married fictional characters on the astral plane. "_Right_."

Lelouch rolled his eyes. "I occasionally watch football for the _tactics_, _not_ the sweaty, athletic men in tight clothing." Which was actually true, mostly.

C.C. sighed. "Less talk," she said. "More pizza."

Well, by gollies. He just couldn't argue with her, could he?

He leveled his best, most honest, most terrifying death glare on her, waiting for her to keel over and yelp.

C.C. just blinked. Somehow, he imagined his death glare to reflect dramatically from her invincible aura, and scatter listlessly into the corners of the room. Possibly while making dramatic whimpering sounds.

Yeah, well. No, he couldn't.

With a sigh of the utterly defeated, he reached for his wallet. And just to save the last shreds of his dignity, he added, "But just this once. You hear me?"

* * *

All things considered, things weren't so bad, really. Oh, _sure_, he had obligatory family dinners to attend to on weekends, no one to come home to but his eccentric cousin, and when he wasn't out meeting friends or reading, nothing to do but either argue with her over semantics or have her _tease_ him over same, but -

But, well, things still weren't so bad, all in all, he reminded himself when he settled into his favorite reading spot, the couch in the living room. He had a respectable, if boring job at an investment firm, made handsome extra money as a chess champion, lived... Okay. Lived with a green-haired, pizza-addicted scowl-ball, but at the very least she wasn't his _other_ immediate family, and then he had his sweet, lovely, all-encompassing si -

_Ding dong._

- len -

Well. God. Dammit. So much for _that_.

He got up from the couch he'd just settled into to read C. G. Jung's _Traumanalyse_ (in German, of course. Also, limited edition), craned his neck to look for his cousin, and called, "Get the door."

No answer.

"Get the -"

"Bathroom," came the reply from the second story. Then, a plaintive, "Your wallet's on the kitchen table."

Since saying 'thanks' to someone telling you where _your own wallet is_ didn't seem very appropriate, he got up with the sigh of the defeated, snatched his wallet from the table with more force than was entirely necessary, and stalked over the still-ringing door.

"I'm coming," he grumbled. Under his breath, "Impatient moron."

_Ding dong, ding dong,_ the bell continued to screech (it was _trying_ to annoy him even more, he was sure of it, the improbability of an inanimate object being out for his neck notwithstanding). He closed his hand around the door handle, and yanked the door open.

He looked at the man standing at his door step. Well, for a moment he didn't see much of anything but two large and very green eyes blinking back at him.

"Did anyone order an extra-large sausage?" said two amazingly green eyes (well, technically, Lelouch supposed, a mouth hanging somewhere below those eyes, but he hadn't gotten there yet). Then those eyes blinked. "Sir?"

"Sausage?" Lelouch repeated. May have stuttered. Just a little. Like,_ "S-s-s-sausage?"_

The man - _boy_, Lelouch decided internally - was starting to look a little puzzled. "Yes, an extra-large sausage pizza. From _Passion Pizza...?_" He squinted a little. "Did I come to the wrong address?"

Oh. Pizza. C.C. _Pizza._

Lelouch cleared his throat. Worried his voice would come out uncharacteristically high-pitched, he settled on grumbling, "No, you didn't. We ordered pizza."

That's when Lelouch finally managed to tear his gaze away from those eyes, dropping it to take in the guy's appearance.

Hmm. About his height, medium built. His features were... exotic. Eastern Asian, maybe. No, most definitely. He was wet from the rain; brunette hair was matted against his temples, with several rain drops still dangling on the tips. Nice, easy smile. Handsome, but in a quiet, unassuming way, like he'd be easy to overlook in a crowd (except for those eyes).

But - and that's when Lelouch frowned - that _uniform_. A large red heart stitched into its center (complete with a tacky cupid's arrow piercing it), 'Passion Pizza - Where we make you come back for more!' written in bold letters, and worst of all, a tiny little hat, _also_ adorned by a heart -

_Tacky,_ Lelouch decided with a small raise of his upper lip.

"Um. Well?" the guy asked, cocking his head to the side, and snapping Lelouch out of his appraisal long enough for his eyes to fall onto his face again.

And then, a smile split the pizza boy's face, one that lit up his eyes right along with it.

Lelouch suddenly forgot everything about tacky uniforms and related things. Also, he might have felt the room around him swell like an orchestra hall.

The pizza boy blinked. "Are you going to take the pizza or not?"

Lelouch shook his head, forcibly deflated the atmosphere, and decided what he'd been thinking about all along: whatever they were paying this guy at 'Passion Pizza,' it wasn't nearly enough. Because. That hat.

That's what he'd been thinking about and he was sticking with it.

"Yes, thank you very much," he said, taking the pizza carton. Then fumbled for his wallet, opening it. "You take credit cards, right?"

Lelouch could hear more than see him smile. "Of course we do, sir. High-end equipment here at _Passion Pizza._" He shifted a little. "And that makes 24.5, sir."

To his credit, Lelouch blanched just a little. To his _dis_credit, he said, "That much?"

A pause. "Then, well it is an extra-large family-size sausa -"

"Sausage. I get it," Lelouch said. Then, in a hurry to bring this conversation to an end, he shoved a bill into the guy's arms, and proceeded to close the door.

He caught the delivery boy's eyes then - wide and a twinkling with surprise - and he said, "But sir, that's -"

Lelouch closed the door shut without another word.

It was only when he heard the moped start up that he realized he'd given the stupid delivery boy a whole _fifty_ dollar bill.

* * *

"And what happened to _you_?" C.C. asked, sauntering over to the extra-large sausage pizza on the kitchen table.

"Me?" He looked up from his book, and knitted his eyebrows together. "What should have happened to me?"

C.C. shrugged. "Nothing, I guess." She opened the pizza box, and let out a small coo of delight at seeing the chessy, fatty (..._sausagey_, Lelouch mentally added) goo. Taking one slice (she always took the first slice a little daintily, with one finger spread apart - he guessed it was the pizza version of holding a fine cup of tea).

Then, she looked at him over the rim of her pizza, and said, as if that was the most natural thing to say, "You just look like you had an orgasm, is all."

"_What_?" His voice, just _this_ south of a scandalized yelp. Full-stop. "What? I did not."

"I figured you didn't," she said, starting to chew. "Since you never get laid and all."

He narrowed his eyes. "Since you know about my sex life -"

"Or lack of it," C.C. added, chewing.

He paused. "_Or lack of it_ so well, you should refrain from making absurd accusations."

"It was not an accusation. It was a simile." She pointed to the book in Lelouch's lap. "The kind you find in that pretentious literature you love to read."

He was not having this conversation. He was not having this conversation. He was _not _-

"Just eat your pizza," he said. "It cost me a fifty."

C.C. frowned. "This pizza costs less than thirty. Trust me. I know."

Oh, he had just about had it with her - _seriously_. He got up, the book crashing to the floor, him bending awkwardly to pick it up - then he sent her a glare, cradled the book against his chest, and stalked up the stair case to his room. Just before he closed the door, he called, "Just so you know, that pizza really _is_ worth fifty." Why he cared that she knew this, he didn't know. And didn't particularly care to find out.

* * *

The next day, it felt like Lelouch had the mother of all headaches gnawing away at his inner skull. He hadn't gotten much sleep last night - just why, he didn't really know - so he had half-dragged himself into _Lamperouge Investments_ this morning, and sunken into his chair without so much as making eye contact with his co-workers. And now, to make matters worse, the letters of the documents he was trying to work on were swimming in front of his eyes.

It was then that Lelouch decided that this day could not possibly get any worse.

That's when Gino exploded into his office in a flurry of gold-yellow, sparkling blue, tightly condensed energy, and Lelouch promptly revised that theory.

"Hello, Lelouch," Gino greeted, eyes winking and dancing. "How are we this fine morning?"

What he really wanted to say was, "About a heart beat away from finding out what would happen if I threw my paper weights at you," but what he did end up saying was, "...Fine."

Gino stopped in his tracks. Studied him. Even cocked his head, in a way that was so like C.C.

Lelouch groaned. "What?"

"Well, well." A grin spread on his face, loose and sweet. "Let's look at _that_."

"Look at what?" Lelouch asked. Revise another theory: _grandmother_ of all headaches. "Gino, I'm not in the mood. I gave you papers to look over yesterday." A stern look. "Are you done with them?"

"Yes," Gino said. Then with a dangerous grin, he leaned against Lelouch's desk (Lelouch's eyebrow twitched just slightly at watching several pieces of important documents getting crunched beneath his weight) , and Gino said, "So, who is she?"

Lelouch blinked. "Who is who?" He liked Gino all right most of the time - although to be honest he didn't know what a guy like him was doing working at an investment firm of all places - but sometimes he might as well have been speaking Japanese in how incomprehensible he sometimes was.

Then Gino leaned in closer. "Her." Then, when Lelouch gave him another uncomprehending look, he elaborated, "The girl you're thinking about right now."

Lelouch frowned. "There is no girl I'm thinking about. And if there was, I couldn't hear her over the screams of my headache anyway." He reached for his mug of coffee.

"Really?" Gino's face fell almost comically. "Huh. I was sure you'd caught the love bug. Sorry about that. Let's forget about that, then, huh?" Then, he let out a boisterous laugh, and slapped Lelouch on the back. Hard.

So hard, in fact, that Lelouch choked on his coffee, and ended up spitting out half of it all over the documents on his desk.

"Oops." Gino said, smile dropping. "Sooorry."

Lelouch continued to cough, clawing at his neck.

Revision #2, he thought throughout all of this:

The _founding mother_ of all headaches.

* * *

When Lelouch fell into his couch that evening, he thought he wouldn't get up until bed time tonight. At the _earliest._

And he most likely wouldn't have, if he had been living alone. Since he wasn't -

_Ding dong._

"Oh, for all. That is. Holy," he breathed, craning his eyes to look for his cousin. "C.C. The door."

Silence. Long, twining, horribly empty silence, which he was just about to tear apart with another yell when the door bell got there first, and another round of _'diiing doong'_ stabbed right into his temples with the precision of a hunting knife.

Lelouch cursed, jumped to his feet, stalked over to the door, and opened it, all in quick succession.

"Hello." His smile was warm, like lazy sunlight that saturated your pores on a glowing summer afternoon. Then, the dawn of recognition broadened his face. "Heh. It's you again. Thanks for the tip yesterday."

He still looked friendly, which was an accomplishment, since it was still raining, and the boy himself was still drenched. Or _again_, more accurately. And Lelouch wasn't quite sure why he was thinking about all and any of this.

"More sausage?" Lelouch settled on asking, in lieu of anything better to say.

"No. We got an order for an extra-large Hawaiian today."

Huh. Hawaii. Lelouch wondered if that was where he was from. Hawaii had a large Japanese population - could this boy be Japanese?

Lelouch referenced and cross-referenced everything he knew and had ever heard of or about Japan, and found it came up to little more than the basic facts everyone knew, and the names of a few authors he'd read novels of in high school.

"That'll be another 25, then, sir," the boy said, interrupting his thought process. Though he was still friendly, he looked a bit more subdued than yesterday - the weather had to be getting to him, Lelouch thought - what with his hair all over the place, and a certain tightness around (those amazing) eyes that spoke of both cold and fatigue.

Actually, the word that came to mind was _bedraggled._

Then, he realized that there was _bed_ and _drag_ in that word. And _glad_, if you mixed it up.

Not that this was of any relevance whatsoever.

Lelouch thought for a second. Then, "I apologize for being rude, but do you happen to be related to the _Suzukis_?"

The pizza boy's features sank a little in a lack of recognition.

Lelouch went on. "Oh, you aren't? They are a Japanese family living in this neighborhood, and I was just wondering if you might be related. You remind me of them."

The boy looked like he was about to say something. Then stopped. Considered.

Suddenly, the sound of the rain drilling against the roof and slapping against the windows became very loud.

Something seemed to come to the pizza boy, and a smile - and Lelouch caught the _smugness_ in it for just a second - spread over his face, before he said, "No, I'm afraid I haven't heard of them." He smiled a bit wider, now less smug. "I'm from the Kururugi family. You probably haven't heard of us. We're not rich."

"Kururugi, huh?" Lelouch said, pretending to be deep in thought.

"Suzaku," the pizza boy supplied. "Suzaku Kururugi."

_Ding-dong-dong. Mission accomplished. Name retrieved._

Lelouch smiled (maybe just the teeniest bit haughtily), took the pizza from the boy's (_Suzaku's_, Lelouch mentally reminded himself) arms, paid him (25 exactly this time), wished him a good rest of the night, and closed the door.

Only to nearly jump at C.C. staring right at him, arms crossed over her breasts, unreadable expression on her face.

"You startled me," Lelouch bit, and shoved the carton into her arms. "Here, your pizza."

C.C. just kept looking. She didn't even swagger over to the table to dig into her pizza. She just looked.

"What?"

And that's when Lelouch noticed that C.C. looked the most amused he had ever seen her, gold eyes bright and shiny. "Caught red-handed."

His heart pulsing beneath the thin skin of his neck and cheeks, Lelouch forced himself to remain calm, shrugging open-armed. "I have no idea what you are referring to."

C.C. shrugged. "There are no _Suzukis_ in our neighborhood. And I know you weren't mixing up their names with any other family, either."

Though feeling like he was about to choke on his own breath, he shrugged and appeared nonchalant. "Think what you want, C.C."

Some of her hair bobbed and fell when she shook her head. "Don't worry. I'm not interested in your little school boy crush."

Lelouch resisted the urge to point out to her that he very much did not have a school boy crush - or any crush of any kind ever - but, knowing how pointless arguing was with her- "As I said, 'think what you want.'"

A smile stretched over her lips. "Yes. And what I'm thinking right now is that you won't complain about me getting pizza there again." A pause. "Perhaps not even if I switched to party-size with extra toppings -"

Lelouch _groaned_.

* * *

Lelouch was prepared today. Or as prepared as he was _ever_ going to get.

He was not so much lounging as _balancing_ on his sofa, one eye scanning the book he was holding open with one hand while the other other eye glanced around, slipping over and then shooing away from the door like a stray kitten from the waiting hand of a stranger.

He wasn't nervous. Or anything like that. Or _anticipating_ anything, mind. He was just, well – he knew for a fact that C.C. had ordered more pizza today (and well, he'd pretty much lost the argument last night, or had had his ass handed to him, if one wanted to put it more accurately yet less politely), and well –

And well, if Lelouch was going to get interrupted reading his book anyway, he better get it over with sooner rather than later, right?

That didn't quite explain why he very nearly _fell off the couch_ (and maybe let out an undignified yelp, too) at the sound of the door bell tearing through the house, but the explanation was close enough.

As soon as Lelouch had composed himself, he licked his lips, called, "I'm getting the door!" to wherever C.C. was lurking right now, then shuffled over to the door, twisted the key, and flung the door open.

"Hello, sir." _Suzaku_ (the name was a bit weird to Lelouch still, but he was getting around to it) was standing there in the swelling darkness of the late evening, smile as nice and easy as always. "I've got a party-size Sicilian with extra pepperoni topping for you today, sir."

Lelouch set his mouth on auto-pilot. "Sicilian, yes." Actually, Lelouch had no clue what the hell was on a Sicilian and didn't know much about Sicily other than what he'd learned from mafia movies, but no matter – "My cousin has always liked Sicilian pizza." _My cousin, not my girlfriend or whatever you might have thought_, he tried to say telepathically. He shrugged, giving Suzaku a small smile. "I guess it was only a matter of time until she ordered one."

_Suzaku_ (and Lelouch started to really like that name) held his eyes, seemingly enjoying the moment. "Oh, yeah. I heard it was always a girl making orders from this address – which is why I was a bit surprised to see you, sir." A pause, and maybe the telepathic message had just arrived with a bing when he said, "Cousin, huh."

Lelouch was so happy with himself it took all his will power not to congratulate himself on the spot. Which was fortunate, giving how all that happiness was run over, stuffed into a body bag, and dumped into a lake with all of Suzaku's next sentence:

"Well, that makes 34.99 then, sir," he said. His eyes should have flashed red and his voice lowered and warped into an alien drawl, prominently seen in low-quality theatrical productions of which Lelouch had absolutely no knowledge.

As it was, Suzaku just kept smiling. And Lelouch –

Swallowed. Bit it down. Even willed himself to forget about the price, forget even about C.C., forgot about everything. He bit down on his lower lip and opened his wallet, startling to ruffle through it.

Lelouch was very aware of the warm presence of the pizza boy standing right before him, his eyes like physical weights against Lelouch's face.

Suzaku wasn't the type to wear cool colors like blue or purple, Lelouch decided. No, _Suzaku_ – and Lelouch found that he _really_ liked to call him this in his head – partly because he was proud of his Sherlock-fu, and maybe partly because of the fact that the 'ku' in it had made Suzaku's lips purse when he'd told him – and _anyway_, Suzaku looked much better in warm colors.

Lelouch pretended to squint into his wallet, retrieving two bills. He opened the coin department with a click, the coins clanking and jingling against his searching fingers.

Because Suzaku's coloring was already so warm, see. _90 cents. 95 cents. Four more._ The tan of his skin was warm like bread swelling beneath the heat; the green of his eyes shone vivid and alive, strangely lush and liquid, like green leaves glinting after a summer shower, and he didn't know where the hell these similes were coming from. _98 cents, one more._

All his coloring was so warm that he should always wear colors as warm as his own, definitely. Brown, orange – not the loud kind, but a bright tone of orange, orange like the sunset – oh, and red, especially red -

There was a ratching sound and it took Lelouch a moment to realize that it had been Suzaku discreetly clearing his throat.

Lelouch could feel his own eyebrow raise in displeasure.

He fished the last 1 cent piece out of his wallet moodily, said, "Here," and shoved the entire 34.99 (2 bills and something like 20 coins) into the boy's hand, whose eyes widened slightly, trying to balance the coins on his palm without dropping any.

That ridiculous hat on his head jerked, and the palpilating heart pierced by that errant arrow right along with it. It was a pity, Lelouch thought with an internal sigh. Suzaku might actually be kind of attractive without that tacky cupid's heart on his head.

"May I ask you something, sir?" Suzaku asked while balancing the mountain of coins. "Something... private?"

"Yes?" Lelouch muttered.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-one," he answered monotonously. _Something like a tight flame-red shirt that brings out the color of his eyes. Or just red, not necessarily tight. Though tight would be good. For some reason._

Suzaku smiled, and as always, it was just way too disgustingly amiable. "Me too. We're the same age. Kind of cool."

"Huh," Lelouch said, for lack of anything better to say.

He quickly referenced and cross-referenced the statistical likelihood of him looking like an immense jerk if he didn't tip the boy, and, since results came out unfavourably, reached into his pocket again, retrieved a 10 dollar bill, and put it right over the tower of coins quivering in Suzaku's palm like a makeshift blanket.

As with many things, it didn't occur to Lelouch that that had been sort-of-kind-of enormously _awkward_ until well into the next chapter of Victor Hugo's original French edition of _Notre Dame de Paris._

* * *

The realization that Lelouch had – at best – developed a bit of a crush on the stupid pizza boy, and – at worst – gotten completely infatuated with him hit him sometime between page 78 and 79.

As it often was with realization such as these, inspiration didn't just slowly descend upon like a slowly-drifting veil, but much rather hit him over the head and left him floundering much like one of Cornelia's so very well-timed slaps.

It hadn't even been provoked by anything at all. One minute he'd been reading a long-winded passage in outdated French, and the next, some well-hidden part of his psyche had slipped past the the looming, steel-tinted walls of _Denial_ long enough to announce, point-blank, "You want him, you idiot."

_You want him, you idiot._ At least Lelouch knew it couldn't have been anyone but his subconsciousness talking to him, since no one else would ever dare to call him an idiot. Lelouch slapped the book shut and leaned forward, elbows resting on fanned-out legs, staring at his hands as if it had been _them_ and not his hormones or whatever that had betrayed him.

The sound of clothes rustling came from behind Lelouch. "Do I even have to ask?" C.C. drawled.

"No." He flexed his hands, watching his slim fingers bend and release and the pale skin stretched over them crease and stretch.

That _tic_ that liked to settle between his eyes when he was irritated swept in, rippling through his forehead.

Well. That complicated matters. Since, he realized with a start, he had _absolutely no idea_ what to do about it. All of his previous methods of 'courtship' had been subconscious – and, gods, _now_ realized that 'courtship' was exactly what he'd been doing, and about as gracefully as a rhinoceros doing a re-interpretation of _The Swan Lake_, too.

He shuffled to his feet without a word to his cousin and bristled past her into the bathroom. Switching on the lights with a punch of his fist, he stumbled toward the mirror, putting both of his hands on the mirror to either side of his head. And stared. At himself.

Tangled emotions brimming in deep-set violet eyes shone back at him. There was surprise in there, and a bit of amazement, and more expressions he could not place. A blush stood high on his cheeks.

"Lelouch Lamperouge," he told his mirror image. "I never thought I'd say this. But you're the biggest moron I've _ever _seen."

* * *

As aforementioned, the worst thing about having this... _crush_, or whatever it was, was, of course, that Lelouch had absolutely no experience with any of this stuff. The last time and only other time he'd felt anything like romantic desire for anyone had been when he had been all but eight, and it had been for a girl – and a _blood relative_. So the whole, "Oh my God, I kind of totally want into the pizza boy's pants _for no apparent reason_" thing was not only completely insane and moronic, but awkward besides.

He twirled a pen in his fingers, trying - very hard - to ignore the pile of unread documents to his right.

He decided that, if nothing else, he had to get rid of this ridiculous crush as soon as he could. Leave it behind him, so he could go back to his boring, but blissfully easy ROUTINE of going to work, going home, and fighting with his eccentric cousin. He'd never thought he'd pine for the capital letters of that word ever again.

So, he made his decision, got up from his desk, walked out into the buzzing office world and the clirring, ticking, chattering aural mess of it all, and wandered around until he located Gino somewhere hidden behind a huge fax machine and surrounded by the clutter of at least a dozen coffee mugs. Also, not alone.

Gino was straddling a chair backwards, chin resting on the back rest while both of his hands were braiding Kallen's hair, who was clicking away on her computer and mumbling something to Gino every so often. Lelouch froze in his steps for a moment, watching how Gino guffawed his low, throaty trademark laugh while letting the strands of her hair slide through his fingers with an expression on his face that was nothing as much as _lovestruck_.

The tangle in Lelouch's stomach tightened at the thought whether he'd ever be caught staring at that damn pizza boy like that. And who would live to tell the tale.

Sauntering over to the couple, he cleared his throat.

Gino almost fell out of his chair at the sight of him. Kallen's eyes widened and she whipped herself to her feet, bowing and greeting with a low, "M-Mister Lamperouge."

He eyed the both of them.

Gino gave him a little wink and said, "Good morning, Lelouch."

This was a bad idea. This was a very, very bad idea. But – "Gino, come to my office." And again, that _tic_ between his eyes. "_Right now._"

"Hey – I'm sorry, man," Gino said the moment the both of them spilled into Lelouch's office. "I swear I was working – and not just on Kallen's braids – but, then, while I was working – _so hard_, man – that's when she was suddenly complaining about the hair falling into her face, and -"

"I don't care," Lelouch bit, and realized with a start that he really didn't. Any other time, and he'd probably give Gino extra work (a whole stash of it) for philandering with his girlfriend on the job, but today –

He stopped. His mouth felt as if he had dry-swallowed a pill. Licked his lips. "I -" Oh hell, just get it over with. "I need to ask you a favor."

Silence. Lelouch felt the dry heat-gusts of the air conditioned snuggle against his back. And the clock toll a full hour across the town square.

After a few centuries of that, Gino blinked, eyes a little wide, lips a little parted – and then he smiled suddenly, eyelids lowering and mouth twisting up, and he said, "Sorry – Kallen would kill me. Besides," he shook his head as if he regretted it very much. "I don't swing that way."

It took a moment for the neurons in Lelouch's brain to spark to life and figure out what that meant. "_Not that kind of favor, you moron._"

"Oh." Gino smiled. "Oh. Great, then."

"You know what?" Lelouch hissed. "Forget about it. That was a stupid idea."

"What, no." He straightened himself with pride. "I'm your _secretary_."

Lelouch eyed him. "Don't _remind_ me."

Gino skipped over the insult. "And as your secretary, I'm responsible for fulfilling all your favors – well, except for _those_."

The headache-monster in Lelouch's head raised his head, deciding it wanted another tasty brain-snack. He pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose. "I wanted to ask for advice." He snapped his head up. "And just to be clear, if you tell any living soul, you're so fired you -"

" – will have a body riddled with third-degrees," Gino finished easily. "And I'm still here, right?" A glance down his body. "And not very fired."

Lelouch sighed. Licked his lips. "So, hypothetically speaking," he started. Licked his lips again. "_Hypothetically speaking_, if I had a crush on someone – and no, it's not you, and no, it's not Kallen or anyone else in this office, either.. " his voice lowered, embarrassed, and he finished with a weak, "What would you suggest I do about it?"

Gino looked at him for a moment. Then, a smug grin split his face, and he announced, "Woot, I was right. You are so totally in love with someone."

"Not in love," Lelouch said. "I don't even know him."

He realized his mistake the second he'd bitten that last word. And blanched.

Gino's face lit up like a glow-bug. "_Him?_"

Lelouch mumbled obscenities under his breath, feeling the horrible spear of shame skewering through his intestines. Well, he tried to reason, at least that was out of the bag – and he figured having a crush on a guy was preferable to having one on your _own sister_. If nothing else. So what if he was clinging at straws here?

"...Yes," Lelouch said, and felt not unlike he'd just confessed to the murder of a dozen infants in front of a sour-faced judge. "There is someone like that."

Gino looked like he was about to say a Gino-thing – Lelouch could always tell when he was about to, his chest expanding with an important intake of breath, his eyes shining – but then he decided to forego that and just said, "There is a guy you have a crush on and you don't know what to do about it. That's it?"

How could Gino make it sound so simple? "In quick summary, yes."

"Duuude," Gino said sympathetically.

He knew his eyebrow was twitching, he could just _feel_ it. "Well, can you help me or not, because if not, I'd really prefer you get out right now and never mention this to me ever again. Ever."

"No, no, no," Gino held up his hands defensively. "I can help. Gino Weinberg, the love therapist, at your service!"

Lelouch looked at him.

Gino cocked his head. "That was terribly cheesy, wasn't it?"

"More than the extra cheese topping from _Passion Pizza_. From what I've seen."

"So who is it?"

"I can't tell you that," Lelouch said. And maybe he'd sounded a bit more irritated than he'd intended.

"Well, how can I help you if you don't tell me that? You know, guy A doesn't equal guy B doesn't equal guy C; it's important to know who we're dealing with."

"Your insightful analysis of arithmetics is astounding," Lelouch said blandly.

"I know I'm awesome," Gino said, "but you haven't answered the question."

It took all of Lelouch's self-control not to moan in frustration. But as much as he'd like to pretend it wasn't so, he had to admit that Gino had a point; if he didn't know who he was dealing with, how could he give advice? And so, Lelouch closed his eyes, and muttered, in the voice of a man admission to the murder of a dozen infants _and his entire country_ in front of a sour-faced judge, "It's the stupid pizza boy."

"No. Way," Gino said.

"Yes way," Lelouch hissed.

"Dude." Gino's eyes widened, looking like he was collecting his thoughts. "That is like the most perfect porno cliché ever. Ever." He sounded like he was in awe.

"It's a what now?"

Gino's face fell. "A porno cliché. You know, 'has anyone ordered a large sausage?'"

Lelouch blanched at the memory of that phrase. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said caustically.

"And you know what, I believe you. It's _astounding_."

"And now what does _that_ mean?"

A grin stretched across Gino's lips. "Lelouch," he said conversationally, coming a little closer. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one," he said. What was it with people and asking him his age lately?

"And you've never seen a_ pizza boy porno_?"

"Well, _excuse me_ for not knowing that that was required viewing." He frowned. "And if you don't have anything more to say, you should -"

"I'm getting out, all right," Gino said, straightening his spine. "With you. Right now. We're doing a little excursion." He smiled. "To the porno store."

Lelouch blanched. "We're going to the _where_?"

* * *

**Author's Notes**: The prompt on the kink meme was, "Suza/lulu + CC, Lelouch promises he'll no longer be stingy on paying the witch's pizza deliveries and when he met this pizza delivery boy." LMAO.

And much thanks to Gino for pointing out the obvious.

So. This will be a multi-chapter (my first multi for this pairing, though I've written a few one-shots). I just loved the prompt so much, I can't even tell you! (Well, you're probably noticing...). Yay for random Gino/Kallen?


	2. Pepperoni

**00 - Passion Pizza - 00**

**Chapter 2: Pepperoni  
**

**

* * *

**

Lelouch didn't have much experience with porn.

In fact, his entire experience with porn amounted to little more than what he had caught Rivalz watching in the student council room on an occasion or two and one rather traumatizing run-in with a young lady on a website who had claimed to live in his neighborhood and asked him to visit her personal website.

Yes, that's right, Lelouch Lamperouge's most recent romantic experience: an internet sex bot.

But, at least, said sex bot had likely not been his own sister, if nothing else.

He was just too suave sometimes, really.

But it hadn't really bothered him, ever. After all, among other reasons, his pronounced disinterest in anything involving beer and boobs was what had allowed him to graduate high school earlier and finish up his Bachelor's in Finance at only nineteen – all this while many students three or four years older than him had still been hopelessly mired in the clutches of frat parties, beer and dating.

He had never thought that his – his _asexuality_, he'd decided one day – had been much of a curse.

But he was starting to find out that everything, even supposed blessings such as sexual apathy, had their own special drawbacks.

Such as when you were dragged into a porno store – one with the tacky name _Porntasia_, no less, ugh – by a secretary who was grinning so widely it looked like he was trying to eat both his ears at once.

As soon as they spilled into the warmth of the store, a female voice greeted, "Oh hey, Gino." A pause. "And _hello_, hand_some_ stran~ger."

There was a blond woman leaning on the counter, chewing on a gum, twinkle in her eyes. Also, eyeing him up and down as if he was a particularly nice piece of filet mignon.

And then Gino to his side was off like a thoroughbred through the starting gate, over at the counter, and bumped fists with her. "Yo, Milly. Long time no see."

She pulled her lips over her teeth in a grin, eyelids lowering and the corner of her mouth twisting up in a feline improbable curve. "Had fun with the last batch?"

Lelouch took the moment to let his eyes soak in the room. There were actually no videos of questionable nature on display in the little foyer, but Lelouch made an educated guess that whatever horrors Porntasia had to offer were probably stacked away behind that little curtain leading to another room to the counter's right.

"Oh yeah. Kallen really – and I mean, really," he said with an air of, _'if you know what I mean wink wink_,' "enjoyed that one Japanese student/teacher porn. Pretty good directing and lightning, too."

"The Japanese make the best role playing porn." Milly nodded, jaws busily mashing her chewing gum.

Gino looked like he was about to continue to wax lyrical about porn – just about to, with his eyes bright - before he stopped himself, eyes flitting over to Lelouch. "Milly, meet Lelouch. He's my, uh, boss."

The woman – _Milly _– raised her eyebrows.

"Bo~ss?" she singsonged, interest renewed. Her eyes leaped across from the room right at him, then roamed all over him up and down. Again.

Lelouch made a face.

Milly shrugged, grin still firm in its seat. "Virgin," was the verdict.

"In every sense of the word," Gino said.

Lelouch felt heat burn into his cheekbones. "I'm right here. And not _deaf_."

Both of them ignored him. He was getting a lot of that lately.

"And gay, right?" Milly judged, looking at Gino.

Gino shrugged.

"I'm not gay," Lelouch said with a dainty tone.

Then Gino waltzed over to him, put an arm around his shoulders (ugh, Gino and his touchy-feely ways) , gave him an encouraging smile, and led him toward the ominously fluttering curtain. "Let's go find out, shall we?"

Some undetermined amount of time later, Lelouch had been browsing the rows and rows of covers featuring women in various states of undress for what had seemed like hours, and all Lelouch could think of saying when Gino asked him how he liked it was, "These people can't spell."

Gino gave him a Gino-look, which consisted of a rigorous program of blinking and a very dorky expression.

"You're looking at naked women and you think of spelling," he said.

"Yes," Lelouch said, completely straight-faced. "You don't spell 'come' like that."

"Kay, I was just checking." Gino looked at him in wonder. "Dude, I never thought I'd say this, but - you're more eccentric than I'd thought."

Lelouch looked at him. In the way that made the unsaid but implicit, "I wish I could kill you right now," resound through the entire room, bounce off the walls, and tackle Gino in an avalanche -

Only to reflect and tumble to the floor when Gino said, easily enough, "Hey, it's cool. I'm not judging~"

Breathe, Lelouch, he told himself. He could do this. He could. He had already taken time off work only to – oh God, only to come and look at gigantic boobs, but no time to ponder on that for too long now (or ever) – and all they'd really been doing was browsing through the titles while Lelouch had tried – very hard – not to take too close a look at some of the gaping holes on them.

"So what now?" Lelouch hissed through his teeth. "We're here. On your request. _What now_?"

"I'm trying to assess the situation," Gino said. A beat. "You know. Like an assessor."

At least Lelouch wasn't the only one who failed at similes. It comforted him. But not enough not to say, "It may be pointless to ask, but: what have you 'assessed' so far?"

"I have 'assessed' that you're probably gay. Huh. Did you notice you can't spell 'assess' without -"

"Yes, I have," Lelouch bit. "And I'm not gay. How many times do I have to tell you people?"

"Dude, it's cool," Gino said, holding up both of his hands. "I'm not one of those straight guys who hate on gay dudes just for liking dick. I'm totally fine with it. Different strokes, all that."

"Aren't you a bleeding heart liberal," Lelouch said, rolling his eyes. "There's some trees in front of the shop for you to hug."

Then Gino grinned, in that way that was never a good sign. And broke into a song without any preamble. "_If you were gay_ -"

Oh, fuck. No.

"_That'd be okay_ –"

"Oh no, you are not singing this goddamn stupid song. You are not. You hear me?"

Gino swung an arm over his shoulder and tugged him further down along the aisle. "_I mean, cuz hey._" He smiled at him. "_I'd like you a~ny~way_."

"Gino," Lelouch said weakly. "I really want to grind your bones and fertilize the lawn until they grow into cherry trees. Really."

Gino paused, finally halting the goddamn_ Avenue Q _song. "You know, Lelouch, I like that one. I think it's right up there on my list of my favorite threats. But personally, I think nothing tops the time you threatened to castrate me with a flamethrower."

Lelouch switched tactics at that. If murder threats didn't work, how about some true-and-tested logic?

"I don't really see how looking at porn will make my 'problem' go away."

"That's okay, too," Gino said, dragging him along. "You'll thank me later anyway. Or the cherry trees, in any case."

Sometimes Lelouch wondered why it seemed like the entire universe was out to troll him.

* * *

By the end of it all, Lelouch had seen so many boobs, asses, and cocks on the covers of what seemed like a million different porn titles that his head was spinning as if he'd just gotten off a particularly vicious ride at the amusement park.

Gino had dragged him into the gay section after his little non sequitur at the straight one, and had been mildly surprised that looking at oversized testosterone-driven guerilla jungle soldiers hadn't turned Lelouch on any more than peroxide-blondes with shaved hearts in their pubic hair had.

Hah. Not that gay after all. Which didn't negate the reason why they had come to the store in the first place, sadly.

"Well," Gino said at the end of it all, with a bundle of DVDs in his arms, "this will be your homework then. Pizza boy porn." He announced this with the tone and voice one would usually use to proclaim _"the beeeeeach, dude_." And wriggled on the spot, the top DVDs quivering atop the speared tower of depraved human procilivities. "Aaand I also put in a few plumber and repair men porno movies as well." He gave Lelouch a smile. "Expect a lot of bad puns about 'screwing holes shut.'"

If there had been a desk somewhere in the vicinity, Lelouch's forehead would have been bruised by now.

Milly grinned a little to herself as she checked out the DVDs, then wrapped them up neatly and slid them over the counter.

When they finally walked back out into the wafting dampness of the late afternoon, Lelouch heaved a sigh of relief and for the first time since he had quit his experimental foray into breaking the rules when he had been sixteen, really yearned for a lighter and slim French cigarettes.

He eyed Gino out of the corner of his eye. "Got a smoke?"

Gino made the face of a three-year old with a chocolate-smeared mouth denying he'd raided the secret stash of candy. "Who, me?"

Lelouch rolled his eyes. "I know you smoke in front of the office every lunch break. I can see you from my window."

"Okay, okay, I do, but – hey, _you _smoke?"

"No, I don't," Lelouch said. "But I think now I will."

Gino nodded. "Gotcha."

They sat down somewhere on the winding stairs leading up to the local immigration office, shielded from the curtain of rain that fissured down before them, and lit their cigarettes. They weren't French and they weren't slim, but Lelouch took a deep, pallivative drag and let the gentle pulse of the nicotine calm him anyway.

Some time after the third or the fourth drag, his heart rate finally calmed down and something approaching reason retook control over his mind.

He realized that his life was a complete and utter mess, really. And it was rapidly approaching the levels of such complete and utterly perfect messiness that he was one push away from cackling like a madman about it.

But before he could dwell on the matter much longer (or have a fit of manical laughter, whichever came first), Gino interrupted his thoughts, sounding unusually sober for his standards. "So, what's he like?"

Lelouch shrugged, taking another drag. It tasted horrible, sharp and poisonous, but lung cancer ranked rather low on his list of fears right now. "I don't know. He's a guy."

"Come on, Lelouch." Gino elbowed him. "You really want another 'arithmetical equation' from me?"

Lelouch rolled his eyes, blowing out smoke, and watched it curl in the air for a moment before it scattered. "Fine. He's my age. About my height, maybe a bit shorter. He's handsome. I guess. Not in the _Calvin Klein_ underwear model way, though. More understated."

"So, the 'boy-next-door' type," Gino said, tugging a little at the bag full of porno movies he had stashed between his feet with his cigarette clamped between his lips, speaking around it. "One of my favorites."

Lelouch pointedly ignored him. "What else is there to say? He's very friendly. Has a smile that opens up his face. It's a bit practiced and professional, but still very warm. He's Asian – Japanese, I'm pretty sure."

"My God – you got yellow fever too?" Amazement drizzled his voice. "Wow, I never knew we were so similar. Tell you what, I'll be your faghag."

Lelouch frowned. "I'm pretty sure that 'faghags' are _women_."

"True." Gino's smile wavered a bit. "Hey, is there such a thing as a 'fagbro'?"

"Gino," Lelouch said, taking another drag. "_Shut up_."

Then, he sucked at his cigarette and blew it out slowly, sensually. "Actually, I don't know why I like him."

He didn't know why he said it, really. It was quite possible that he'd just lost his mind, or because he needed to talk to someone about it, even if it was his 'oversized-kindergartener-whose-possibly-radioactive' secretary, but dammit –

Gino said nothing.

"I just do," Lelouch said, continuing his train of thought. "He's not amazing. Not the most dashing man I've ever seen, or anything. He's just a pizza boy, gods. And I barely know him." He shook his head to himself. "And yet. For the first time in so long, I'm -" He paused. "Ah, I don't know."

"Takes a lot for you to admit you don't know something," Gino commented.

Lelouch rolled his eyes. "And thus the amiable mood clutched its bleeding wound and collapsed."

"Okay, okay, okay," Gino said, holding up his hands in defense, the amber at the tip of the cigarette clenched between his fingers cigarette flashing bright. "Okay." He lowered his hands. "I'll be serious for once."

"I can't wait," Lelouch said dryly.

"First, do you have any idea if he's interested back?"

"Sorry to say my magical mind reader's on the friz."

"Aha. Don't be so defensive." Gino slapped him on the back.

Lelouch slumped forward at the force, nearly singing his fringe of black hair on his cigarette. He threw Gino a glare over his shoulder.

"Oops." Gino scratched the back of his head and tried for an innocent smile.

Lelouch looked at him in silence for a few seconds. "No, I don't. He's nice enough, I suppose." Paused. "Asked me how old I was."

"He did?" Gino nearly jumped. Then, louder: "Fuck, he did?"

"Yes. So?"

"That's like - that's the most obvious pick-up line ever. Well, maybe right after, 'uh, so do you come here often?' But right up there, man."

Lelouch shook his head and let his gaze drift away from Gino and over the glistening staircase winding down right in front of him, then up to the lights hiding high in the windows of the tall building beneath the darkening sky.

"Okay, serious advice now," Gino interrupted the silence. He paused. "You should just have sex with him."

Lelouch snorted. "You know, you being 'serious' is decidedly similar to you being _Gino_."

"No, I mean it," he said. "You have a crush, right? Or something. You can't stop thinking about him. Isn't that right?"

A sigh broke from his lips. "I didn't think it could sound any more ridiculous, but out of your mouth, it somehow does."

"So what you do when you want to get someone out of your head is have sex with them," Gino went on, voice a lot more sober than usual. "That tends to kill the mystery. Leave them bare for what they are. Maybe that's just what you need to move on. To forget about him."

"Sounds like a plan." Lelouch rolled his eyes. "Hey, pizza boy! You don't even know my name, but would you like to have some sex -"

" – with the most awkward virgin in history?" Gino supplied, grin slipping back into place.

Lelouch frowned. "I kind of hate you, you know."

"No, you don't," Gino said easily. "That aside-" he stubbed out his cigarette and leaped to his feet, pushing his hands into his pockets, "-think about it."

Lelouch looked at the tip of his own glimmering cigarette and said nothing.

Then he stubbed out his cigarette, and said, "Got another?"

* * *

He stumbled into his house, switched on the light, got out of his dress shoes, let the bag sag against the floor somewhere between the door and the couch, and fell into the welcoming embrace of said couch face-first all in quick succession.

C.C. looked up from the laptop she had set up on the kitchen table. "You're late"

"Don't talk to me," Lelouch said to the pillow. "Just, don't."

She sniffed the air. "Also, you smell of smoke."

Lelouch couldn't quite remember right now if they had smoked one or two whole packs of_ Marlboro Reds_. "Because your constant pizza-stink is that much more aromatic. I get it."

But hey, speaking of pizza -

He looked up at the thought, eyes finding the nonplussed of his cousin staring back at him over the silver rim of her laptop. "You order pizza today?"

She leaned forward on the table, her eyes her focal point. "'Don't talk to me,'" she aped. "'Just, don't.'"

Lelouch sighed. "Why do you people do these things to me." He didn't even raise his voice at the end to make it a question.

"Because you make it too easy, of course," C.C. said. A pause. "And yes, I did."

Lelouch's eyes darted over to the clock hoisted above the sink. "When?"

Which was, of course, exactly when the door bell rang and a fissure of some sort ran through Lelouch's body that was nothing so much as being slapped over the face. Scrambling to his feet, he threw his cousin a look while he stalked over to the door, and flung it open to greet the bane of his existence, to greet –

Some mousy-haired boy with pale violet eyes and a _Pizza Hut_ uniform.

"Hullo," the boy drawled, face lax. "I have an extra-large pep -"

Lelouch closed the door in his face without a word.

"C.C." he said. "You're doing this on purpose, am I right?"

She didn't cackle when she went to get the door herself because she was C.C. and rarely did, but when she stopped by his side to fish his wallet out of his pocket, she still looked the most amused he'd seen her in _years_.

Well, he was just the butt of all the jokes lately, wasn't he.

* * *

"You're sulking," she noted some time later. To be exact, she said it while he was reading page 127 of the original Spanish edition of _Cien años de soledad_ while stretched out on his sofa with one socked foot on the back rest pointing to the ceiling.

"I don't sulk," Lelouch said, voice strung tight over the pulse of irritation. "Sulking is what teenage girls do."

"Close enough then," C.C. said, rustling with the pizza box. "Not liking _Pizza Hut_, I take it."

"I'm not in the mood." He turned another page, barely comprehending what he was reading while his mind was spinning, closing in time and time again around the twirling vortex of Gino's suggestion lodged at its core.

He sighed and shut the book, resting it on his stomach.

Just have sex with him, huh?

Well, if only that were so easy. If only that wouldn't involve stepping out of his comfort zone and right into the heavily militarized zone of the Unknown.

Some part of him knew he should probably shuffle to the computer in his room, pop in the first DVD and pick up some clues, but he pushed that back for later. Later. When he had nothing better to do and was ready to admit to himself that he was lost enough with the situation to have to consult _porn _over it.

The sound of someone getting to their feet and shuffling over to him brought him out of the sinking morass of his thoughts.

She slapped down papers on his stomach and gave him an expectant look.

Lelouch jostled up, giving the bunch of neatly clipped-together papers in his lap a fixing stare. "What's this?"

"Something that might interest you," she said, shrugging. "Information, to be exact."

Lelouch's mind instantly mapped out all the different interpretations to the latter statement, sorted it by likelihood from most to least likely, and verbalized the possibility at the top. "You hacked into his computer?"

Eating pizza and teasing Lelouch was not all C.C. did. She was a rather gifted freelance web programmer whose constant lack of money was mostly the fault of her laziness – and the fact that she wasn't hacking other people's bank accounts by Lelouch's pleading, even though she made an even more formidable hacker than she did a programmer.

His family was just full of charming little quirks, wasn't it?

"It was easy. Hotmail address." She shrugged. "Outdated firewall."

"I _told _you not to do that." His voice rose with anger.

She ignored him. "Suzaku Kururugi," she said in a monotonous drawl, and then began to list information off with her fingers. "Twenty-one. He was born in Tokyo and came to the States when he was five. Graduated high school with average grades. He was the captain of the basketball team. Then he -"

It was then that Lelouch finally found his voice. "Stop it. Stop – stop it."

She actually looked honestly surprised at this. "You do realize I'm helping you out here, don't you?

"You're not helping me," he said, brushing her report aside until it tumbled to the floor. "I don't want to hear any of this."

She cocked her head to the side. Her eyes twitched and roved over his face. "There's a lot that will interest you in this report. Such as what bars he frequents. What _doujo_. Pictures I found on his hard drive that you might find interesting." She paused. "Hints about his sexual orientation, which I'm sure you're _salivating_ to find out about."

Lelouch couldn't help it – his chest tightened at that.

"Also, I'm pretty sure that the report will give you a pretty clear idea about how he ticks. All laid out for you, at your disposal. Even psychological reports written by the shrink he used to visit in high school. All there. Fears, dreams, complexes." She dropped her hands and said almost fondly, "The blinking buttons in a cockpit."

The cartwheel of his morals rumbled along the winding lines framed by the walls of possibilities, nearly steering off course, two wheels already up in the air, and –

Crashed down and the tottered out of the cave of temptation when he fixed her with a determined glare and said, "I don't want him that way."

She raised an interested eyebrow. "Oh?"

"No, I don't," he said, almost to himself. Then, his voice picked up confidence and he added, "I don't want him that way. Not if I have to stalk him, use – use whatever you've dug up against him – just to get him to like me. I don't want him if I have to manipulate him to get him."

"Lelouch," she said, in that voice that meant she was half-sure he had amnesia, "You _thrive _on manipulating people."

"That's clients, and that's dumb co-workers," he clipped. "That's selling people dreams, that's climbing the ladder at the company, with fake smiles and a little prodding and strategically-placed gossip. This is none of that."

Her face was still set into her perpetual mask of apathy, but there – there was an interested glint in her eyes now, distant like the whisks of a fire atop a far-away mountain, but _there_. "All's fair in love and war, Lelouch."

"This is neither love nor war."

"Then what is it?"

"It -" Damn, why was she talking like this, leading him down that creaking mental staircase again? "It just is. Though yes, it is stupid. Moronic, even. Ridiculous. But it is - _he _is - he is not someone I want to mess with that way."

"Manipulation is always a part of the mating game, boya," she said. "Even ridiculous crushes on the pizza boy's nice green eyes."

"But not _unfair _manipulation," he countered. "And this," he said, and gestured at the pile of pages on the floor, "certainly qualifies."

She looked at him for one long, horribly drawn-out moment. "Interesting," she said. "Very interesting."

Lelouch got to his feet, straightening down his clothes. "I don't need whatever you've dug up anyway."

"So confident," she said, voice slow and lazy like honey. "Then what's the plan?"

"To get him out of my head as soon as possible," he said automatically, and realized half-way through the statement that it was the truth.

C.C. raised an eyebrow. "Can you do it?"

He gave her a blank look. "Is that a challenge?"

"Considering the odds, it's more like a horse racing bet," she said. "But yes. How do you intend on getting him out of your head then?"

And really, he blamed C.C. for this. He really, truly did. Blamed her for not giving him the chance to think about it, for letting him act on the dizzying pulse of his emotions, for letting the first thing that tumbled out of his mouth hang in the air until it crystallized and became truth when he said, "I'll sleep with him, that's how."

And then he snapped his mouth shut. Audibly.

She just looked at him and said, very dryly, "Wow."

* * *

He put the discs into his computer that night.

The scene started out serenely enough. A young woman was pictured rubbing herself under the shower (a bit too long for Lelouch's tastes, actually, and he caught himself looking at the watch on his computer), until she finally stepped out of the shower, dried herself, and went to answer the shrill door bell.

Well, so far, so good. He could do this. He could. He had aced all his exams, had gotten into the best university of his state and -

"Did anyone order an extra-large sausage pizza?" a gruffy man from the screen called. Which snapped Lelouch out of his internal backclapping.

Lelouch tensed.

"Oh, yes," the woman sighed. "Sausage. I haven't had any sausage in," her voice dropped, "so long."

"Well, I have a really, really big sausage, baby" the pizza boy said. And grabbed his crotch.

Lelouch frowned at his computer screen.

Then, the girls said, "Why don't you feed me with your sausage?" and played with her bathing robe, twirling the end of the belt like a lasso.

_Script 1/10_, Lelouch thought internally. He'd give them points for the cheesiness, but seriously - what was the script writer thinking?

Then, Lelouch realized what the script writer had been thinking of when the woman threw her bath robe off her body and the pizza boy jumped her, and Lelouch jumped right along with him with a long, drawn-out, embarrasingly undignified, "Whuargh."

He remained like this for the entirety of the movie, pressed against the chair's back rest, arms half-covering his face, and peeking out through his fingers.

It wasn't ending, he noticed after about thirty minutes of this. It just wasn't ending. He glanced at the watch. Was it?

* * *

Then the woman moaned, "Oh yes, fill me with your dirty, dirty sausage," and Lelouch thought, "Nope, it isn't."

* * *

After the whole movie, still curled up against the chair with the face of a torture victim, Lelouch finally knew why everyone had thought _that _phrase had been so funny all along.

* * *

After the second movie (a gay one this time), Lelouch came to the twin realization that he was both very likely not stereotypically gay and that that sausage jokes were getting really old, really fast.

* * *

After the third movie, Lelouch felt his brain threatening to liquidize and stream out of its ears when he had to contemplate that the references to 'super meat boy' weren't any classier, either.

* * *

After the fourth, Lelouch was starting to suspect that something in the universe loathed his guts and wondered what he had done to deserve it all.

What had he ever done that had been so bad? Other than stabbing rival companies in the back and cheating on all his exams. He just couldn't figure it out.

Maybe he'd been a mass-murderer in a past life or something.

* * *

The next morning, he brought the whole stash of porn into his office with him, found Gino engaged in conversation (with Kallen, who else?) near the copy machine, and slapped it down on the table in front of them right along with the fluttering mess of a second small mountain of documents.

"Not that I'm not entirely ungrateful for your help," he said with a fake-smile, "but I still thought you seemed to have entirely a bit too much free time." He pointed at the mountain of documents. "Until tomorrow, eight AM. Overtime if you have to."

Because after all, as (_everyone around him_) _some _people routinely seemed to forget, he was still the CEO of _Lamperouge Investments_, and despite the recent evidence to the contrary, not a total laughing stock.

Well, not all the time, anyway. He just liked to remind people there was still some figurative power to his gangly bones that he could throw around when the need arose.

Next, he returned to his office and dialed C.C.'s cell phone. As soon as she picked up, he said, "Order from Passion Pizza today. 7 PM. Do it or I swear I'll come through with my threat to cancel my credit card. You have my word."

"Huh," C.C. said, sounding amused. "Looking forward to the show. I'll make it sausage."

"Make it whatever you like," he bit.

"Double sausage order for the both of us seemed only fitting," she said.

"C.C. If you're only planning on fulfilling one favor for me your entire life, make it this one: do not. Mention. That Word. To me. _Ever_. Again."

He hung up on her without saying goodbye. And brooded in his office, arms crossed over his chest, frown etched into his forehead, chin lowered.

His insides were knotted with terror, but he was as ready as he'd ever be.

* * *

It was just after six when came home and shrugged out of his jacket shivering with suppressed nerves. _Just _after half past six when he came out of the bathroom, newly plucked, perfumed (or, well, cologne'd), and with brushed teeth and a mint bonbon rolling on his tongue. A quarter before seven when he waltzed out of the bedroom clad in attractive black slacks, a long black shirt, and a red jacket. Just before seven when he set aside his book, leaned forward on the couch, threaded his fingers together, and waited.

His cousin was lounging on a chair in the kitchen with her green hair falling all around her and her eyes firmly trained on him.

But she said nothing and he was glad of it, because he was pretty sure that if she talked to him right now, he would ramble, like he always did when he was nervous.

Especially now that he was really, _really _nervous, with his heart was at the back of his throat, his fingers cold and stiff, his Adam's apple bobbing when he swallowed. He could feel it, the way it pressed up against his ever-tightening esophagus, barely leaving any space for the saliva to pull past.

If she talked to him right now, he'd probably go off on a tangent about the philosophical tendencies of the Middle Ages in an erratic, nervous rant.

Then the door bell rang, catching him in mid-mental rant, and he was snapped out of his orbit of nervous waiting with a start.

He was at the door within a leap, as fast as he'd never been when he'd had to run track in high school, and why was he thinking of track now, seriously, and then he opened the door and _there he was._

"Hey," Suzaku said amiably. "Extra-large pepperoni pizza for you today, sir." He paused. "Or your cousin, I guess."

Lelouch took a deep breath and decided to utilize the first thing he'd learned through the arduous hours of porn-watching: oral fetishes were apparently common.

So, trying to look as casual as he could, he put his finger to his lips and pretended to be lost in thought.

"Pepperoni?" he said, moving his lips against the finger, then slid his eyes over to the pizza boy in what he hoped was really slow and sensual (he hoped for the camera man of the world to take this in slow-mo, please and thank you), and blinked.

Suzaku blinked right back. "Did you cut your finger?"

Okay, he thought, that had not worked quite as well as he'd thought, but – "Yes. Paper cut."

"Oh," Suzaku said, then nodded, eyebrows drooping at the corners in sympathy. "Yeah, I hate those, too."

Lelouch lowered his hand then, giving up on that particular strategy.

And the moment detached itself and hung there, lit by the glow of the electrical lights streaming in from the bulbs above the door. Just the two of them, looking at each other.

The funny thing was that the one with the giant pile of Italian fast-food in his arms and a hat with a cupid's arrow on his head wasn't the one who was more ridiculous.

Also, the moment was getting kind of awkward, so Lelouch scrambled for something else he'd learned, and - yes, bad puns. But in the absence of bad puns, what about bad small talk -

"It's not raining anymore," he said. Because he couldn't think of anything better to say. The idea to say that had been better than the alternative – which had been, "Is pepperoni some kind of sausage, too?" and yeah, that hadn't sounded that cool even to him.

"Yeah," Suzaku said. "We get busy when it's raining, but orders ease up a bit when it isn't. I think – I guess people don't want to go out when it's raining."

"Because it's raining," Lelouch said.

"Yeah." The smile made his eyes turn up, and look more almond-shaped. "Because it's raining. Sir."

Well, that was going smoothly, at least. His first proper conversation with the pizza boy. So what if it was about _rain_?

Then, in the midst of fumbling for the key to the next level of small talk, Lelouch realized Suzaku had given him an opening there.

"Oh, you don't need to call me 'sir' all the time. Everybody at the office already calls me that." _There_, now he'd very subtly bragged about his status, too. And everyone in the pizza porn always bragged about their occupation. Wasn't he good at this? "You can call me my name. Lelouch."

Suzaku let out a sudden, short laugh.

The sound was interesting, sudden but not entirely unpleasant, like the first drop of rain on a clear day.

"That's an uncommon name. And very, uh, French. But pretty."

"It's not French," Lelouch said. "I don't think this name exists in France. And I speak French, by the way." Wow, first the office thing, now his_ linguistic accomplishments_? He took a second to mentally congratulate himself for doing so good at presenting himself from his best side.

"I always wanted to learn French, but," Suzaku said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment and a little self-deprecating smile, "I sort of failed high school Spanish."

Lelouch didn't know what to say to that. "Happens?" he tried. It actually didn't to him, but to others it might.

"I guess, yeah." Suzaku dropped his hand. "So if you aren't French, what's the story behind the name?"

"I think my parents were just eccentric," he said. "Also, not French," he added, and mentally kicked himself, because _that _had been a bit of an overkill, hadn't it?

"Is that so?" Suzaku said, tone three-quarters polite and maybe – maybe one quarter teasing.

Lelouch sighed. "I know you're thinking, 'looks like it runs in the family.'"

"Well." Suzaku smiled a bit sheepishly. "Would it be terribly out of line if I said I was?"

"Not terribly," Lelouch said. "Maybe a little bit."

"I apologize for that little bit then," Suzaku said.

"It's fine," Lelouch replied.

And then the conversation sort of fell of a cliff. They looked at each other, one half tentative and one half curious.

The need to say something to keep the conversation going, and Lelouch knew that Suzaku was only seconds away from saying, "Oh, and well that makes whatever now," and Lelouch would have to pay him, and tip him, and then he'd go, and then that would probably be the end of it.

In the porn movies he'd seen, this was the part when he'd open his bathrobe and say, "Oh, I'm dripping wet, come and heat me up, baby," but since this wasn't a porno (or not yet, anyway) –

"It's not raining anymore," he said. And blanched.

For an investment genius, he really was fucking stupid sometimes, wasn't he?

"Uh. Yeah," Suzaku said, looking confused for a moment. "It's a - slow night tonight. Not many orders. I have a couple of free minutes right now..."

And while Lelouch could be pretty fucking stupid sometimes, he did see that wide, gaping – okay, no, he thought with a shiver, that brought up memories from last night. Anyway. The _opening_.

"Would you," he asked, hesitating for a moment before he gathered all the last bits of courage stashed away in the attic of his emotions, and finished with, "like to come in for a cup of coffee?"

Suzaku gave him another one of those smiles then.

Lelouch decided he really liked them. They weren't those big sun-smiles that set on Gino's face and lit him up, and they weren't like Kallen's crooked half-smiles, and they weren't C.C.'s caustic little not-smiles, they were just –

The word that came to mind was '_fond_,' actually. Like - like he was his long-lost childhood friend and he was seeing him again for the first time (yes, that's _exactly _what it looked like, Lelouch decided). Even though that was ridiculous since you couldn't be fond of someone you didn't know, and Suzaku probably looked at all his other clients the very same way, looked at them just like this, but -

Still. That was maybe part of what had triggered this whole hopeless crush debacle.

Then Suzaku finally brought him out of his musings when he said, "Yeah, I'd like that cup of coffee, sir – I mean, Lelouch."

* * *

**Author's Notes**:

Song used in this chapter is, obviously, "If you were gay" by Avenue Q. Oh Gino, I can't decide if you make the best or the worst fagbro ever. 8D

This was graciously beta'd by Hedonistic_Opporunist, who is totally awesome and who you should stalk. 8D She's in my favorite author's tab. Remaining errors are my own.

So!

C.C. just upped the ante. Hurhur. XD

Next chapter: not spoiling what that last scene will lead up to, but I'll say this: if you thought people were done trolling Lelouch... XD

You were wrong.

Bwahaha!

Gracious thanks to everyone who reviewed! You are amazing. I was so happy to see that there was interest in this. Because lol, pizza boy AU.

'Till next time~


	3. What's Your Phone Number?

**00 - Passion Pizza - 00**

**Chapter 3: ^^;;**

* * *

Now that he had him in his place, Lelouch's 'Seduce Suzaku Kururugi' master plan was thus: sound as interesting, smart, and eloquent as possible, somehow wriggle the boy's phone number out of him, look as enticing as possible (_wink wink blush blush_ - shy glances from beneath hooded eyelids seemed to be_ á la mode_ after all_), _and THEN – then when Lelouch had finally enticed him so long that the desire burned in is smoldering emerald orbs, and then let loose in a crescendo of passion when he jumped up and ripped his clothes from his body to reveal long stretches of steely muscles and cascading hair and -

… Though now he had the sneaking suspicion that he was somehow mixing up porn with certain low-cost novels commercially found at supermarket chains of which Lelouch had absolutely no knowledge. (Thank you, Euphy).

Lelouch watched Suzaku step into his house out of the corner of his eye.

Suzaku looked pleased, almost pliant – his face smoothed into a lax, casually polite expression that left the corners of his mouth slightly upturned in what was not quite a smile, yet not anything else – and he seemed, of all things...

Completely unvexed.

Definitey not like he was just barely suppressing the throes of passion that were throwing themselves against their chains with the burning need to jump and _ravish _and -

Okay, maybe Lelouch was just getting a bit ahead of himself there. The boy hadn't even gotten out of his shoes yet, after all.

Lelouch cleared his throat. "Well, this is my place." He waved his hand with a limp wrist in a gesture that probably looked both flamboyant and theatrical. He was just hoping it leaned more toward the latter than the former.

Suzaku toed out of his shoes, shook the curls out of his eyes with a tilt of his head, and peered into the voluminous living room. "Wow. It's a nice place. And so clean, too." His mouth quirked a little in embarrassment. "My room's so messy. Clothes everywhere and stuff."

Lelouch slapped on his best 'business-conference' smile - the one that was both sharp and distant, and had the added benefit of making everyone believe he was capable. "Thank you. I'm sure your room's not as bad as you say." A pause. "Ah, the pizza." He stepped up to Suzaku to lift it out his arms (hands brushing together for a second, two, and _that _alone made his stomach twist a bit - ), and then turned around to waltz up ahead into the living room - until his face dropped and the butterflies in his stomach were crushed beneath a steel pipe when his eyes fell on CC staring right back at him from where she sat curled on a chair around the table.

Lelouch pinned her with his eyes, dropped the corners of his mouth in ire (because... couldn't she just - evaporate or something?), and said with a succinct tone, "Oh. You haven't met my cousin." He turned around and waited for Suzaku to shuffle into the living room. "She's -"

"CC," she said, tone bored and drawling.

A question mark broadened Suzaku's features for a second before he pulled himself back together, probably deciding it wasn't any of his business why she referred to herself by initials only. Nodding politely, he said, "Hello. I'm Suzaku. Your cousin invited me in for -"

"I know what he invited you in for," she interrupted. "I probably know it much better than you do." Her voice balanced wobbily atop a rope strung high above the abyss of cynicism.

_God...damn you, CC_. Lelouch looked at her in a way that he hoped communicated everything he wanted to say. _Shut up or you'll regret it._

She shrugged. _Empty threats._ _You'd never kill me._

Lelouch raised his eyebrows. _Are you so sure?_

She waved a bit. _Too much paperwork._

Suzaku cleared his throat. "Um, did I come at a bad time...?"

"Not at all," Lelouch said, eyes still trained on CC. He walked over to the table and put the pizza box down in front of her. It didn't actually make any effects at all, but Lelouch thought it really should have stirred up clouds of swirling dust for added dramatics.

CC's eyes slid over to the pizza box, narrowing a little.

Lelouch straightened his back. "My cousin was going to go upstairs now anyway. She said she had some work to do. _Doesn't she?_"

CC shrugged. "I think she'll stay and watch, personally."

Suzaku sent them both looks of utter confusion.

CC let her chin fall forward, resting it on her knees. Then, she simply said, "They used to call him Anal Boy."

Lelouch and Suzaku's jaws probably fell simultaneously at that. But before Lelouch had formulated an adequate come-back (... he'd _just _gotten past 'uwhahahargh?'), CC shrugged and went on with a poignant, "That is to say-" she idly let her fingers run over the pizza carton, "-he was always very clean."

"Oh," Suzaku said, surprise immediately smoothing into a look torn between confusion and tentative approval. "Oh, I see."

And as for Lelouch -

"CC." The words were squeezed through a tightly-constricted throat, and sounded a lot like a venomous snake-hiss. "Do you remember what I said about you earlier in relation to my credit card?"

She looked at him. Blankly.

A headache was just starting to form in his head, when she finally sighed, let her legs slide off the chair, and leaped to her feet, all in one fluid motion framed by a curtain of green hair. "Fine." She fixed Suzaku with a look and drawled, "Just one last thing." She tilted her head a little, then asked in a completely monotonous voice, "Suzaku... how's Shirley?"

Suzaku blinked.

Lelouch blinked, too.

Then whipped his head around to look at Suzaku, who was blinking in a way that spelled out complete incomprehension in morse code. "Pardon?"

"You know." CC shrugged. "Shirley. Have you called her yet?"

"CC," Lelouch said in a voice that hiked up the tones until it uncomfortably reminded him of that time when he'd been a teenager and his voice had constantly reminded him of a broken accordion, "That's quite -" _And are you crazy, how can you so carelessly say that, what if he figures out that you hacked into his computer, you you YOU -_

But he never got to finish either his sentence or his mental rant, because that's when Suzaku said something, and it wasn't, "How do you know this?" and it wasn't, "It's none of your business," it was just -

"...I should, right?" His voice sounded small, standing in contrast to his bashful smile. "I probably should."

Lelouch snapped his head around to stare at him.

Then he closed his eyes. Counted to five. Counted from five backward. Opened his eyes again when he was fairly sure he wouldn't lose his mind in the immediate future, stared at his cousin, and said with as much finality as he could muster, "CC. Don't. Make me. Say it again."

Then, miraculously, CC listened to him.

Maybe it was because she had finally found it in her (withered, stone-cold) heart to take pity with him, or maybe because she sensed she'd finally gone too far, or maybe because she remembered the cherub-faced child she used to smother and cherish (and feed chili-peppered pizza - )

Of course, it was also entirely possible she had just gotten bored with him, but, in any case - she gave a languid shrug, picked up the pizza box, turned around, sashayed over to the stairs, and climbed them until she disappeared from view.

Which left them alone. Thankfully.

...And supremely awkwardly.

"I... apologize on her behalf," Lelouch said, and walked over to the coffee machine, very careful not to meet Suzaku's eyes. "She has an odd sense of humor."

Lelouch couldn't see him with his eyes trained on the coffee machine, but he could hear him all right. "She's... certainly an interesting girl."

"Well, we're related." Lelouch poured the coffee into the cups, and placed them on a porcelain tray.

"Does she speak French, too?"

Lelouch turned around with the tray in his hands, and met Suzaku's eyes across the room. "Are you _teasing _me?"

Suzaku smiled at him, in a way that Lelouch couldn't quite place; one half honestly polite, a quarter bashful, a quarter - _what_? "Of course not. Why would I tease a customer?"

"Why you would tease a customer probably largely depends on the reason why you are teasing one right now, don't you think?" Lelouch said casually.

"You're right. I'm sorry." Suzaku rubbed the back of his head, mouth stretched into a self-deprecating and somewhat lopsided smile.

Lelouch liked his full, bright smile better. "No offense taken," he said, and carefully put the tray on the table. A strand of black hair loosened from behind his ear and splayed across his vision; he swept it back behind his ear with what he hoped was a casually elegant gesture. "Sit down. How do you like your coffee?"

"...Cream and sugar." Suzaku loosened a jacket he'd wrapped around his hips, folded it over the chair, and then slid into the seat - looking not unlike a puppy peering into today's food tray; eager and enthusiastic, eyes all bright, hair glinting maple beneath the light bulbs -

Lelouch gave him a look from beneath hooded eyelids, and asked, "Cream and sugar are on the tray." A pause, then delivered in a casual tone, "Sweet tooth?"

"Yeah - quite," Suzaku agreed. Then, he gave a short laugh and added, "To tell you a secret: I actually hate pizza. I mean, I'm just _so sick _of it after the years."

Lelouch nodded. "I can imagine it's kind of like me and the stock market. It can get... tiresome." Well, wasn't this going fantastic? Another conversation - and he hadn't even mentioned the weather yet or made any other kind of blunder. Things were looking up.

...Only, they were still so very decidedly polite and platonic that it was hardly something to brag about, but hey. At least he wasn't being ridiculous right now. Right? _Right_?

"I can imagine." Suzaku helped himself to some cream and poured a generous amount into his coffee. "I can't imagine being inside an office all day long."

"You get used to it."

"I guess." He shook his head to himself. "Oh, it's not like I wouldn't quit and do investing instead if I could. Better money."

"Probably." He gave Suzaku a once-over, and added, "Maybe you should quit."

He noticed too late that he had hit a chord there. Noticed it only when Suzaku squirmed in his seat - actually _squirmed _- but before Lelouch could get a better look at his face, Suzaku raised the coffee cup and hid his face behind it. "I can't."

And that - had been the most somber thing he'd ever heard him say.

Lelouch closed his mouth with an audible click, suspicion hatching. There were several different ways in which to interpret that particular sentence.

One more look at Suzaku convinced him to climb down the rope of that particular conversational dead-end, and climb it down _fast_.

Lelouch mumbled a low apology, and hid his face behind his own cup.

When Suzaku didn't want to talk about why he was working as a pizza boy when he seemed to dislike the job, Lelouch was astute enough to know it wasn't the time or place to ask about that _Shirley _girl. Judging from the context, Lelouch surmised she was probably not Suzaku's girlfriend - and she was most likely not a close relative either, given the name. And so...

… Lelouch realized that they didn't have much to talk about, really, since - well, since Lelouch couldn't very well ambush him with - well -

With something like, "Okay, so I have this really inappropriate crush on you and my crazy secretary who I am secretly suspecting might just be a space alien high on methylphenidate posing as a human advised me to have sex with you and yes, I know that's really crazy and I don't even know _but _-"

And Suzaku was looking at him, and Lelouch stopped his internal rambling-cross-sex-proposition long enough to meet his eyes.

The tension between them condensed into a ball that dangled in the air, right before Lelouch's face.

It was probably mocking him too, just like the rest of the universe. There _was _a conspiracy, he was sure of it.

Then Suzaku tilted his head a little to the side. "Can I ask - where are you from?"

Lelouch gave him a long look. Then shrugged and turned his face away to take a sip from his coffee. "Is it that obvious I'm not from here?"

And Suzaku did that thing again: he laughed, short and breathy. "It's - it's a small town. And we're the same age, right? Here, most people the same age know each other." He paused. "It's a _really _small town, after all."

Lelouch stirred his coffee with a tiny spoon. "...Originally? England."

"Yeah? When did you come here?"

"When did I come to this country or when did I come to this town? As for the first - about ten years ago. As for the second - it's been a year maybe."

The sudden silence spurred Lelouch to glance at Suzaku across the rim of his cup.

What he saw on Suzaku's face was, of all things, contemplation.

Lelouch blinked. "What?"

"A whole year..." Suzaku bit his lower lip. Then, something seemed to come to him - he nodded, leaned forward a bit, and said, "Let's fuck."

...No, okay. No, no. Okay. _No_, that's not what he said. That had just been Lelouch's imagination.

Although what he _did _say was not any less flustering.

"What's your phone number?"

Which, really, to Lelouch, was close enough.

When he'd rehearsed this scene in his mind before and cooked up a similar situation, his mental cinema had played it out something like this:

Lelouch would lean it, the right curve to my mouth, the upward glance through lidded eyes, the angle of his neck just _so _(flashing just the tiniest stretch of milky-white throat, oh yes), and his voice would drop a tone or two or seventeen down to sultry, and he'd say -

"_Whu-What_?"

Suzaku blinked. Then blinked again in a way that reminded Lelouch rather sourly of the cursor of MS doc. "Oh. Well." Suzaku looked confused. "If you don't - "

Lelouch blinked, continuing their conversation in blank-document-cursors. Then, the meaning finally unraveled itself, and a lever in his brain was pushed the right way finally, the electricity sizzling into the circuit, and he said, "Phone number." He straightened his face. "Of course."

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Suzaku said, voice concerned. "I was just thinking -"

"It's fine," Lelouch said. (_Fucking amazing_). "I can give it to you -" (Oops, porn dialogue). "I mean, I can tell you." He straightened himself. "Right now."

Suzaku blinked. "Um. Okay." He reached into his pocket and extracted a sleek silver phone, and poised his fingers over the buttons. "Yeah?"

Lelouch recited the number in a monotone - somehow managing _not _to stumble over his words, or let the timbre in his voice betray him, or do anything really or cringe-worthy such as rattling on and on about the weather, and somehow succeeded in delivering his number to Suzaku.

Suzaku punched in the numbers, then flipped the phone shut. "All right, gotcha. I'm going to send you a text so you can save mine easily."

Lelouch nodded. Then swallowed, and fidgeted on his seat. Was this the part where he... made a move or what?

He watched as Suzaku stashed his cell phone back into his pocket. Watched as he met his eyes again, and gave him another one of _those _smiles (the ones from the door step, the ones that made the air around him glow), and Lelouch -

Pretty much felt like bumping his fist and hooting, "Yay," with all the dignity of a drunk frat boy the moment he wrote the last line on his last final exam, because. Because this was basically a break-through (fuck, _yes_), this was what he'd been waiting for (never mind that he was no closer to getting him out of his head), this was a little moment of glory, this was -

_'Jibun woooo, sekai sae mo, kaete -'_

- a - _what_?

Lelouch almost jumped in his seat at the sound of a song blaring through his little moment of glory, eyes darting around in search for the origin of that noise.

"I'm sorry." Suzaku's eyes were wide. "I'm sorry, it's my cell phone, I'll - just - "

And with that, he fished his cell phone back out of his pocket, flipped it open (and cut off the pop song right in the middle of a long-drawn out _screech_), and -

"Yes? Oh, yes, I was just about to - No, I didn't. Yes. Yes, I'm sorry, I - I understand. Seven. Well, eight with this one - Excuse me?"

Lelouch, for his part, could do little more than stare.

Both hands cupping his phone, Suzaku sent him an apologetic look. "Yes. Right away - of course, I understand. Yes - bye."

He flipped the phone shut, and slid back around to face Lelouch. "I'm sorry. I -"

"Busy... huh?" Lelouch said.

An embarrassed smile. "Yeah, I'm - sorry, it was nice to talk to you - but-" He lifted his cup to his lips again, and downed the coffee with one long gulp, "- Mmh, the coffee's great - but, anyway, I'm sorry. I..." His eyes creased when he smiled like that, all flustered and apologetic. "...I've gotta go."

"I see." Lelouch got to his feet as well. "I suppose then there is nothing that can be done about it."

Suzaku shook his head, then nodded a couple more times, and then walked over to the front door. Once in front of it, he turned around once more.

"And thanks for giving me your number. I'll keep in touch, if that's all right."

"Of course," Lelouch said, and joined him by the door. "I wouldn't have given you my number if it wasn't."

Suzaku looked like he wanted to say something else, then stopped himself and shook his head. "Seriously, I - I know what it can be like." He bent down for his shoes. "Being new in town and everything." He toed into them, stomped against the floor a few more times, then straightened himself. "I just thought we should be friends."

His smile was so pretty. Like a sunset, a painting, or a very well-organized Statement of Financial Position.

"Yes, I'd like that," Lelouch said. And he did, of course - he'd like to be friends with him, he thought as he watched him put his ridiculous hat back on his head. Then Suzaku finally quoted the price for the pizza, and Lelouch handed him a generous bill, and Suzaku smiled one more time, and waved, and then stepped out past the door step and closed the door, and then he was gone.

CC said, "Well, isn't that boy a veritable little sunshine. I've got to say, he's a lot more chipper than I would have thought from his files."

Lelouch paled, and turned around.

CC was leaning against the wall beside the stair case, looking at him with her usual brand of casual apathy on her face.

Lelouch made a sour face, then waltzed past her toward the couch. "A better think to say would be, 'sorry I eavesdropped.'"

She shrugged. "I'd be sorrier if I hadn't. It was very entertaining."

"Right," Lelouch said, almost to himself. "Asking you not be nosy is kind of like asking Jesus not to be holy. I get it."

He heard her chuckle a bit, then the rustle of clothes as she wandered over to the couch. "I just felt like congratulating you, is all." She came to a halt behind the couch.

"Oh, and whatever for?" Lelouch asked, even while he felt his stomach clench in dread. Because he was kind of sure he knew the answer already.

"Congratulations," CC said sullenly, and leaned down over him so that her green hair fell down and draped over his shoulders, "on getting friend-zoned, of course."

* * *

Arguing with CC was a little bit like trying to access a website when its server was down. Every argument was another desperate hammering at the refresh button, and every snide metaphorical brush-off another big, blinking 'Could not connect, fuck you very much' message popping up on the screen.

And yet he kept trying anyway - out of the useless hope that maybe, the tenth time he said it, things would magically align themselves and somehow work out. Or the one hundredth.

And during most of it, she just looked at him out of bored eyes, and nibbled on her disgusting pizza, while Lelouch paced around the living room like tribesman around a fire. "You got friend-zoned," she repeated with practiced precision. "Simple as that."

Lelouch was pretty sure she was right. And yet - "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think you are not in the possession of any kind of magical mind-reading powers."

She shrugged. "Eyes will do. He's a guy. When you tell a guy you're a friend, he files you away as a friend. Especially him."

Oh, yes, and there was _that_, too. "And don't you ever mention things to him that you're not supposed to know - I _told _you to be careful, and if he figures it out. Then, _God_- there isn't a word in the English language strong enough to describe how much I hate you right now."

She tilted her head. "Maybe in one of the other three you know, then?"

Lelouch paused. "_Four_, actually."

"Oh, did you make progress with Russian?"

"Yes," Lelouch said, and felt his chest expand in pride. "Actually, I'm just about to read Dosto - wait. No, that's not going to work, witch."

She sighed then, in that way she sometimes did. Like she was hundreds of years old and this was all a very boring assignment she'd done dozens of times already and that never got any less dull the more often she completed it. "Fine." She pointed to the chair. "Do you have any idea what to do with _this _then?"

Suzaku had forgotten his jacket when he'd left; it hung there folded over the chair, limp like a flag of surrender. Or a constant mockery.

Lelouch had felt such mixed feelings upon discovering it that he'd even foregone the prescribed disgust at its lacklustre quality and old-fashioned design. Which was saying something, really.

"I guess he'll come back for it," Lelouch said. Personally, he'd toss it, but -

"Oh?" She quirked an interested eyebrow. "And... you think that's the right course of action?"

It was like she was a girl playing with a kitten, and she'd just unraveled her palm to let a thread hang just before its nose - only the kitten had yet to figure out if it liked that particular bait or not.

When Lelouch's phone lit up with the new text message, and he flipped open to read, 'SORRY DID I LEAVE MY JACKET?' (and yes, all in caps) was approximately the same moment the wheels in his head finally clicked and he finally _understood _the full implications of the bait.

"I see." He flipped the phone shut without answering, and looked at her.

CC walked over to the stair case, but stopped on the bottom stair to turn around. "Dating - the basic rules of boy-chases-girl - they're the same as any kind of strategic game." She shrugged. "Or boy-chases-boy, as the case may be."

"I think I prefer the politically correct term 'boy-chases-potential-romantic-_someone_,' personally."

She leaned forward with a smirk, and braced her elbows against the banister, looking down at Lelouch. "Why do you think dating is like that? Why do people dress up, make themselves look pretty - brag about their occupations or hobbies?"

"Marketing." Lelouch averted his eyes and focused on a painting on the wall. "I knew that - whether you market a company or yourself, the basic idea is the same. Obviously."

"Hmm," she hummed. "But you're not thinking of it in those terms, are you?"

He was really starting to lose his patience with her. "What are you getting at?"

"All I'm saying is that if only you could think of it in more strategic terms, you'd find it easy to make the next move." She paused. "But you can't. Too bad."

"It's not the same as any other kind of strategic game," Lelouch said.

"There are key differences, certainly. But that's advanced theory, I'm afraid."

"I know what you're trying to tell me, CC."

"Good." He could hear her straighten her back, and then continue to walk up the stairs. "Tomorrow morning would be fine for a text. You'll probably thank me later."

Lelouch sighed, deep and low and utterly defeated. "Good night."

...He knew far too well what her idea of 'thanking her' consisted of. Sigh.

Sometimes he wondered if this whole situation would be resolved before or after he was stripped off his very last penny - or his sanity, whichever came first. If he were a little bit more morbid than he was, he would've started betting on the winner in the little race.

* * *

Lelouch had a strange dream that night.

He could only remember it rather dimly upon waking up in the morning, but he _could _still gleam from the hazy planes of his memory that the dream had somehow involved heaps of alcohol, vomit, Suzaku, and a situation that could have come straight out of the gay bathroom edition of any of the dreadful pornos he'd seen.

He'd still woken up with his eyes wet and his sheets wetter.

* * *

He resolved never to tell anyone about that dream. Ever. Not even if they bound him up and threatened to unleash physical torture equal to the mental anguish of The Great Stock Market Crash of October 1929 upon his battered, broken body.

(Because: he'd been the 'girl' in it.

Oh gods).

* * *

Most days at _Lamperouge Investments_ were rather similar:

Lelouch went to work at exactly eight in the morning - sometimes he'd be a late by a minute or two if he'd bought a bagel on the way or it had been raining, but he was in no later than five past eight. He'd march into the office, letting the door fall shut behind him with an ominous thud, followed by an overpowering sense of import immediately settling around the office space.

(Or so he liked to think).

He usually had his first cup of coffee by nine. The second no later than by ten thirty - and then more as the hours clicked past and time liquidized and trickled down the sucking quick sand of Excel spread sheets, statistical calculations, documents, phone calls, e-mails, or those stock market figures that Lelouch could stare at endlessly as if they held the answers to all the questions in the universe. They _might_, if money could talk.

He wasn't doing any of that right now. He was drinking coffee - his second or third or.. fifth cup by now. But the numbers in front of him were blurry, fives growing heads and snaking into nines, and nines curling into threes, and number bleeding together like a water color painting that had been left out in the rain too long.

He'd only check his phone every five minutes, he'd promised himself in the beginning. Only steal a glance to the black mobile phone peeking out from the pocket of his slacks every handful of minutes, at the most -

Until 'every five minutes' had somehow turned into 'every two minutes' and - fuck it, he was checking his phone again now, wasn't he?

The display screen winked back at him, cool and barren.

Lelouch flipped it shut, sighed, and tried to focus on the numbers again until the mere act of staring at his computer screen made the numbers start to blur and actually move into each other in a way that actually reminded Lelouch of some sort of bizarre numbers gang bang.

… Which only helped to drive in the point that even the fucking stock market was seeing more action than Lelouch. Fantastic.

Then the screen lit up in a text message, and for a moment, Lelouch was actually so shocked he nearly dropped his (expensive, bluetooth-enabled) cell phone.

'SORRY FOR THE LATE REPLY. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BRING ME MY JACKET TO MY PLACE. I'LL STOP BY LATER IF THAT'S OK?'

Heart beating hammer-soft in Lelouch's veins, he typed a quick reply. 'It's really no problem. I can swing by no probl -'

Nah. He deleted the last part.

'It's all right. I can come -'

… No. Guh.

'Don't worry. If you give me your address, I'll just-' He considered for a moment - 'drop it off after work.'

He hit the Send button, waited for delivery - and then slumped back into his chair as if he'd just completed a successful run at the Iron Man, letting out a long, drawn-out sigh.

Now all he could do was wait for a reply.

And maybe do some work, now that he was free.

… Nah.

* * *

When he logged into his Facebook, bored out of his mind and tired of looking at cat pictures, he saw a new friend request.

His heart shot up, lodged in his throat - the plummeted down unceremoniously and landed somewhere low in his stomach when he realized it wasn't him, but just some mousy-haired boy he vaguely remembered having seen somewhere before.

He declined the friend request, and went back to waiting.

* * *

When the phone finally vibrated with Suzaku's reply, Lelouch was in the middle of drinking his fifth (or eleventh, or twelfth) cup of coffee and had aligned and re-aligned all his pencils in alphabetical order enough times to probably grant him an insanity plea at court.

He nearly dropped the phone when he flipped it open, eyes drinking in the text message, and -

His features fell. His body collapsed in a boneless heap against the (expensive, Italian) leather of his chair, and he decided, once and for all, that he was going to do everything in his mind to sue that bitch Fortuna.

He had the best lawyers. He could win.

* * *

Gino looked about the most puzzled Lelouch had ever seen him.

He peered at Lelouch's phone with an expression of absolute confusion sprawled across his features - eyebrows drooping down at the corners, frown etched into his forehead, and a huge question mark artfully broadening his face into the quintessential mask of _No _fucking _ comprende._

"Well?" Lelouch bit. "What do you think?"

"I..." Gino scratched the back of his head. "_He _sent that?"

Lelouch rolled his eyes.

"Okay, okay, I get it. I get it. But - um."

"Yes," Lelouch said, and folded his hands in front of him, staring at his own long, slim fingers threading together in front of him. "Exactly."

"We should, ah. Call Kallen?" Gino blinked. "I mean, she's good with that kind of stuff. And I, uh - I have no idea, really. Haha."

Lelouch cursed the gods, the weather, the poor sod who had invented pizza, and the current season of _American Idol _blaring on the TV soemwhere at the back of the office for good measure, and nodded.

Five minutes later, three groomed and competent business people stared hunched over a cell phone set up in the middle of a table.

Lelouch blinked and blinked. But no matter how often he did it, the message on the display screen remained the same.

That single, unnerving, completely nonsensical -

" ^^;; "

….

….

_"_Well," Kallen said slowly. "It's an Asian emoticon - I know that much, but..."

"It's laughing, isn't it?" Lelouch let his knuckled crack. "It's laughing at me, isn't it? Making fun of me?"

"Looks like it," Gino commented, entirely too chipper.

Kallen just blinked. "Well, maybe not necessarily, but -" She threw a look to Gino, and then back to Lelouch. "Say... who's... AS?"

Ah, the name he'd saved Suzaku's number under. He'd been contemplating to save it under his real name, a pseudonym, or just 'Pizza,' or something like that - but had then just decided to go for a nonsensical string of letters.

In his mind, that had been a great plan. He wasn't so sure anymore.

"Alice Spacer," Lelouch answered without thinking. "She's... someone I know."

Kallen raised an eyebrow, and sent a look to Gino. "Oh... I see."

Then she smiled.

Lelouch knew that smile. He knew that fucking smile - it was the same one Euphy always used to do, that little nudge nudge of girlish joy that Lelouch had learned early on his life spelled nothing but DOOM in capital letters underscored by their very own over dramatic Latin choir.

But - but, fuck it. If Kallen wanted to think he liked some girl named Alice, then that was all right. (It was... kind of better than the truth, anyway). "Yes - so what. Does." His voice hitched up another pitch with every syllable. "It. Mean?"

"Um." Kallen blinked. "Well, what's the context?"

Gino shrugged. "He tried to ask h -" He threw a meaningful look to Lelouch. "- _Her _out."

Gino was enjoying this far too much, Lelouch decided.

Kallen blinked again, then smiled. "Wow - seriously? That's _awesome_."

Okay, Lelouch was a little taken aback at that. "What?"

"Ah - it's just that you're always by yourself, so - sounds cool." She nodded to herself. "Yeah, the boss finally finding someone? Pretty neat."

"Alice~" Gino chirped.

Lelouch had heard the rumors in the office, in passing. Something about a stick being inconveniently located in a sensitive orifice on his person, hushed in whispers that Lelouch dealt with quick and efficiently with the most venomous lava glares this side of the Atlantic ocean.

"What." Seriously, for the last time. _The last time. _"Does it _mean_?"

"Um. Well, it might mean she likes you," Kallen offered.

"Alice~" Gino chirped again.

Lelouch raised an eyebrow. "It might?"

Kallen nodded. "Yeah. But then again, it might not."

"Ali -"

"So God help you, Gino, YOU ARE NOT SINGING THE 'WHO THE FUCK IS ALICE' SONG." He knew that _twitch _in his eye was back. He nodded at Kallen, somehow managing to reign his voice back in and press it down to less hostile altitudes. "Continue."

"It's an Asian emoticon, it means something like an embarrassed smile. See, the... uh the little... bridges. Or something." She pointed at them on the display. "They mean smiling eyes and the little semi-colons here mean sweat drops."

"So it's like... sweat-dropping smiling eyes?" Gino asked.

"It probably means an embarrassed smile, genius," Lelouch bit.

"Right," Kallen continued. "It could mean, 'Hell yeah, ask me out, I'm in.' Or, well... or it could mean she's uncomfortable."

"So basically," Lelouch asked lowly, "You have no real clue either?"

Kallen shrugged.

"_Wonderful_," Lelouch declared. "Just wonderful."

Kallen sent a confused look to Gino.

Gino mouthed, 'It's _baaad_.'

Lelouch's eyebrow twitched.

"Though in my opinion..." Kallen said, and sent a look to Gino before continuing, "I think the best course of action would be to be... assertive."

"Assertive?" Lelouch repeated hollowly.

"Yeah," she said. "You know... manly."

"...I can do that," Lelouch lied. Really, in all honesty, he had no idea what 'being manly' entailed other than drinking beer and grabbing his own crotch, but. He'd improvise. He gave her a look. "Are you fully convinced of the convincing success rate of this theory?"

It was the exact same thing he said when she or anyone else on his staff proposed a new business concept. Oh well. In a way, this was similar anyway. Thanks, CC.

Kallen shrugged. "I think so... I think most girls appreciate that in a man. Confidence. And if she's not interested, she'll probably tell you."

"Right. Go get _her_," Gino supplied.

Lelouch really didn't like the obvious way in which Gino pronounced that particular pronoun. Lelouch quickly referenced the statistical likelihood of him being able to get away with murder, and quickly discarded the idea as unfeasible.

Besides, Gino wouldn't exactly fit into a body bag.

"Then what..." Oh God, this was so humiliating. He was starting to think that _dream _might have been less humiliating, and that had been - yeah. "Just be … assertive?"

"Yeah?" Kallen replied.

"Yeah." That was Gino, beaming like a seven-foot Disney Princess.

"Yeah..." That was Lelouch, trailing off in thought. "Yeah." And that was Lelouch, sounding more convinced. "Okay."

Assertive. That sounded good in theory. From the (very few) romantic comedies he'd ever been forced to sit through in his life, that had certainly seemed like a desirable sort of man. Nevermind that Suzaku wasn't _really _a woman (...did it matter? Did that really make a difference in the grand scope of things? He was a woman in the sense that Lelouch was a man and pursuing him and... no, there was something wrong with that logic. Sighs).

...It seemed worth a shot anyway. Only, now both of his co-workers were staring at him with nearly identical questioning looks on their faces (...had they rubbed off on each other?) .

Lelouch briefly considered how rude it would be to tell them both to get the fuck out right now. Thus - "Thanks." Then, "Now get out."

...He figured the fact he'd lost the 'the fuck' probably helped to make him look slightly less like an ass.

As soon as his two co-workers had finally filed out of his office, Lelouch let out a long sigh, stared at his cell phone, and wrecked his mind for a proper reply.

_Assertive_... huh.

He'd tried to be just that before, really. He'd invited Suzaku into his house, ordered him to his house multiple times - how much more assertive did he have to be? No, this was about as 'direct' as he could possibly be.

But -

He put his elbows against the desk and let his forehead fall down and bang against the desk with an empathic, "Whua-blargh."

_Guh_.

He opened his eyes, blinked away a couple of stray strands of hair that had fallen down across his vision, and considered; the possibilities lining up like hopeful actresses at a low-class casting call.

He considered for a long moment, cheek pressed flat against the desk, arms limply by his side, and gaze unfocused, searching every fibre of his being for stray rest supplies of bravery - and then shot up in determination, grabbed his phone, typed, "I'm coming over. What's your address?" flipped the phone shut, put it back onto the desk, and let his head flop back against the desk, all in quick succession.

The seconds ticked past. Lelouch watched the sun light fall in from the large window and dapple across his assortment of strewn-out pens and papers. Listened to the soft purr of his computer. Waited.

His display lit up in reply.

It took the message of 'A REPLY' all but a couple of mini seconds to drench his cells and somehow shift his mental matrix enough to connect the impression with the response ' get the phone,' and when he finally lunged at it and flipped it open -

"OKAY. HOW BOUT 8? SRY I FINISH WORK LATE." And then his address - also all in those idiotic caps (WHY DID THAT BOY TEXT ALL IN CAPS?), but never mind now, because -

Lelouch jumped to his feet, suppressing a fit of triumphant laughter, the thought, 'I did it, Eureka, I did it,' running on loop in his head, and he was just in the middle of gloating and congratulating himself on having been sufficiently manly when he tripped over his own feet and smashed against the floor face-first.

"Ow."

…

…

Well, he supposed he'd just do the gloating later. It looked like the universe was trying to tell him something here.

* * *

For the rest of the day, he listened to several clients on the phone natter and pratter about several different kind of possible business ventures, exchanged pleasantries with several people he'd much rather sock in the face, and had looked at more Excel spreadsheets than were probably classified as healthy by the WHO by the end of it all.

Now that he had filed away the pizza boy-thing as a temporary victory, it was easy enough to focus on work; his mind suddenly much more supple, easy to bend around the teeth of numbers and calculations.

Gino came into his office at the end of the work day to report the usual summary of the day, at which point the conversation quickly degraded into:

"Those porno videos were useless, by the way. Thanks for nothing."

"You didn't learn anything from it? But - didn't you get his phone number?"

"I did. Hah. It was all my own doing, though. I invited him in for coffee."

"No way, dude. How was it?"

"... Caffeine-filled?"

"What, you didn't get laid?"

"Of course not. Guh. I said _coffee_."

"But 'coffee' doesn't mean coffee. 'Coffee' means sex."

"...You know, I'm seriously starting to wonder if the thin air up there atrophied your brain. Besides, not trusting you ever again after that porn store debacle, Gino."

"... So you're going over to his place?"

"At eight. To return some ridiculous no-brand jacket."

"Good luck, man."

"...Do you have -"

"Smoke. Got it."

They went out into the little park in front of the office building then, the one with the tiny swings and the benches where the smokers gathered in front of Lelouch's office window during lunch break.

A quick look at Lelouch's watch revealed that it was seven. Between the two of them, they emptied all of Gino's Malboro pack and were halfway during the second when Gino made some sort of comment about Lelouch limping tomorrow, and Lelouch told him to go and engage in anatomically-improbable self-loving, but not in those words.

Gino laughed and told him that it was funny that he was so elegant and yet so fond of his expletives, and Lelouch thought that Gino sort of looked as benevolent as a beauty queen waving at her admirers in the process. Only less gay.

Gino laughed when Lelouch told him that (sounding like, "Pfffwhuhaha"), then told Lelouch he looked the same. Only _more _gay.

Lelouch wanted to kick him in the shin.

Then he didn't. He just sort of stood there and laughed along - just a little bit, a tiny little chuckle that fell past his lips, and then made him freeze up and wonder what in the world made him laugh at tasteless jokes aimed at his dignity now.

* * *

It was already dark when Lelouch pulled into the driveway of the specified address, the moon a full white burst in the sky, and the street lamps glimmering.

He shrugged out of his car with the jacket in his hands, and let his eyes glide over this house - _Suzaku's _house - and couldn't help but feel slightly underwhelmed.

… An unremarkable two-story house in the suburbs in need of a paint job with a few withered bushes in a tiny speck of garden in front of it. Huh.

Well, he hadn't really expected anything magnificent... but. Still.

Lelouch walked up toward the door, heart beating so hard in his chest that it lent a vibration to his steps, Suzaku's jacket slung over one arm. This was... different, a little twinge in his stomach told him. This was pretty real. He was about to ring the door bell (get invited in? Most likely - ) and well, it was eight PM...

The door swung open before he'd even reached it, and Lelouch found himself staring at empty space.

Then, a high-pitched little voice called, "Hellooo~"

Lelouch blinked - and was just about to ask if he'd gotten the wrong address when he remembered to lower his eyes and come face to face with a little girl with black hair peering curiously up at him from out of glistening and very _green _(green, hello, hi) eyes.

Lelouch blinked again. Probably about as intelligently as Suzaku had in _his _house last evening. "Uh. Hello?"

The girl looked to be about ten, and she was small and pretty. She was smiling, and if the eyes hadn't been a dead-giveaway, Lelouch would have seen the family resemblance right there, in that bright, bright smile that somehow made the atoms buzz and coalesce around her when she said, "Wow - you're so pretty."

Lelouch shrugged. "Ah - thank you, little lady." He looked down at her with a somewhat confused expression on his face. "Is your - brother, I assume -"

But Lelouch didn't even have to finish that sentence; right this moment, there was a bustling sound from beyond the door, some sort of rapid talking, and then - Suzaku at the door, strangely not smiling for once, but saying, "Oh - hello, Lelouch, I'm sorry, we're -"

The little girl tugged at Suzaku's shirt immediately... (Suzaku's shirt? Oh right, he wasn't wearing his stupid pizza boy uniform today - hm, instead he was wearing a (scrabby-looking, ugh) black sweater and (scrabb_ier_-looking) jeans, but - Lelouch supposed it was better than the pizza uniform, although the boy really could do with some brand-name clothing) …. and they were talking in what Lelouch highly suspected was Japanese, but Lelouch wasn't really - (he re-iterated his decision: Suzkau should wear _red_. It would suit him so well).

Then he was suddenly torn out of his inner musings when a _third_ head appeared in the entry way, and Lelouch was staring stupidly at a middle-aged woman grinning at him, and Lelouch could only think, "Well, fuck. Time to meet the family, I guess."

* * *

**Author's Notes**: Four months later, finally a new chapter!

I have no excuse. :D Well, okay, maybe I do:

... ^^;;

LOL, I... just didn't really know what to do with this story, and the first scene in this chapter gave me HELL for months (it was originally going to be very different - I was going to have CC troll them by playing 'I wanna fuck you' by Akon - but then decided against it, and you got some understated fluff instead XD). And then I took a while to actually work out a plot and time line for this, since it was started on a LOL WHIM (going, 'LOL PIZZA BOY AU'), and so it was only now I had to decide what I actually wanted to do with this story. Hence.

So! Next chapter!

One sentence: Lelouch gets drunk, says something stupid, and shit hits the fan. :D LOL!

Lelouch's dream about Suzaku was a LOLOLOL reference to an RP I did with Aki1 in which we paired this Lelouch (from this story) with one of her Suzakus - with disastrous results. LOL. It's on this site under 'Vodka in my Pizza!' :D

Oh, Gino. I love you so much in this fic. Hahahaha. XDD

So, everyone:

^^;;

PS: I'm sorry I didn't reply to many reviews last chapters. I loooove you all, but I was a little out of the fanfic-loop, and it's probably too late to hunt them down in my inbox, so: sorry! I read and loved every single review! And I promise I'll actually review-reply to them all this time, haha. Sorry.


	4. Turnabout

**00 - Passion Pizza - 00**

* * *

_Author's Notes_**: ..**. grovelling, explanation, begging, and a collection of miscellaneous other undignified activities to follow in the proper author's notes at the end. Until then, enjoy this chapter! At 10,800 words, it is definitely the longest of this fic so far. ^^;

* * *

**Chapter 4: Turnabout**

* * *

If Suzaku's house had been... unremarkable from the outside, its interior didn't offer much to remedy that.

Lelouch noted with a slight curl of his upper lip that the furniture in the living room had to be at least several years old, and the carpet beneath his feet, while clean, was also starting to show its age. There were a couple of paintings hanging on the wall opposite a curtained entryway that he assumed led further into the house: Eastern art, it seemed, crisp black outlines and wisps of color. The one on the left, with some sort of majestic red bird, caught his eye for a bit longer than it should have.

The ambience of the house reminded him of his old benefactors' - the ones who took him in when he first parted from his family and crossed the sea to get away from the rain and dreary atmosphere of England only to end up in a house surrounded by cornfields and, well, more cornfields. A quiet elegance that evoked weariness but also former glory, and -

None of that even mattered. Right.

After handing over Suzaku's frayed and old-fashioned jacket (and Lelouch had counted three stains and one dark smudge on it on across the right breast pocket), he had been invited in, engaged in a short and victorious battle with his dress shoes, and once again proved his own eye for detail and cleanliness to himself by picking the sole spot in the entryway to park said dress shoes.

He looked up, and found himself at the glittering mercy of three identically-colored and identically-shaped eyes staring up at him with childlike wonder (in Suzaku and the little kid's face), and that mom-look that betrayed a deep and longing desire to feed the recipient a wide array of home cooked meals complete with eventual regurgitation (on the mom's face).

"My name is Lelouch Lamperouge," he said with poise. "I know Suzaku from..." Well, he mostly knew Suzaku from his doorstep and X-rated dreams, but... "... from work, you could say."

Suzaku's mother nodded.

So did Suzaku.

The little girl, on the other hand, beamed and said, "Mom, she's really pretty."

Lelouch, for his part, flailed most elegantly. "I'm not a _she_."

"You must forgive Kaguya," Suzaku's mother said, twinkle in her eyes. "She's - actually, we're - not used to such good-looking visitors. Why don't you stay for dinner? We were just about to have some meat."

Lelouch nodded. "What kind of meat?"

The woman shrugged. "Just meat."

Lelouch paused, and looked from the girl to Suzaku (pretty eyes) back to the woman, and considered this.

For all the 0.3 seconds it took him to decide that if he had followed the siren's calls of those eyes long enough to end up on the mermaids' shore, he might as well go all the way.

And try to somehow leave with his sanity intact.

(... He wasn't entirely sure why, while he thought that last part, he thought he might have heard C.C.'s humorless cackle).

"Well, I'm a vegetarian," he said. Then considered it for a beat. "But I'll have whatever side dish you can offer."

* * *

Dinner passed without much incident.

Lelouch ate his dinner in silence, and engaged in a verbal ping-pong match with Suzaku's mother regarding his height (5'10"), income (six-lettered, thank you), and marital status (...) while Suzaku and Kaguya kept themselves to quietly eating their dinner while regarding Lelouch with varying levels of interest.

The family seemed inconsequential enough, Lelouch thought. Suzaku's mother - who Lelouch found out was named Mayu between several spurts of questions about his job and heritage - was, Lelouch decided, quite an interesting-looking woman.

Like Suzaku, she was all limbs and energy and fluorescent smiles, all skinny body wanly supporting a gigantic head of timeless beauty, topped off by a wild bird's nest of brown hair. She spoke with a lilting Japanese accent that was not present in Suzaku's voice, but that somehow managed to make her sound adorable rather than nosy.

"My Suzaku," she said, while swinging a piece of meat squished in tightly between two chopsticks, "he's really handsome, isn't he? I'm so proud of him - all the other women at the market always tell me that -"

"M-Mom," Suzaku protested, sending her an embarrassing glance. "Please, not in front of guests."

Suzaku's mother covered her face with her hand, and laughed. "And he's so humble, too."

Suzaku gave a strangled moan of the mortally-embarrassed, and turned his gigantic eyes to Lelouch.

And thus the tail-end of the last thought that had been snaking through Lelouch's head sort of slipped through his fingers, because, _whoa, eyes._

It would have been so easy. So easy to say, "Yes, you're right, he's very handsome."

What Lelouch ended up saying, with a look down at his ramen bowl, was, "It's normal for mothers to praise their children," and that was the end of it.

Somewhere at the back of his head, Gino reprimanded him. Lelouch rolled his eyes and told imaginary back-of-the-head Gino to get lost or he'd cut off his ears, marinate them, and use them as fanciful pencil-holders in his office.

In the real world, Suzaku just laughed, and his mother protested mildly. Kaguya laughed as well, and the atmosphere continued to be light and fresh, with the sound of cutlery clinking, and the breezy hum of conversation settling across the table.

That is, until Lelouch (daintily cleaning his mouth by pressing the rolled-up ends of a napkin against the corners of his mouth) looked around the room and asked, "So, what about your father?"

The change was instantaneous. A noticeable fissure ran throughout the entire room, zipping from one person to the next until it sprang back up onto Lelouch and down his spine in a stomach-twisting curdle of regret.

"I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to -"

"It's... fine," Suzaku's mother answered. "What, it's not like it's a big secret." (It sounded a bit like 'seek-lit').

Suzaku shrugged. "He's gone."

Inconspicuous silence brimmed.

"I'm sorry," Lelouch said with a nod. "My condolences."

All three Kururugis exchanged a short look before, once again, three identically-colored and identically-shaped eyes fell onto Lelouch.

Suzaku shrugged. "He's not dead."

The 'but' remained unspoken but tangible.

And just this once, Lelouch knew better than to dig.

* * *

The summer night wrapped around them like a thick cocoon when Lelouch and Suzaku stepped out in front of the house. They came to a halt a few feet away from Lelouch's car, cast beneath the bleary glow of a sole street lamp flanking the house.

"Thanks." Suzaku looked at his feet, and then up again, offering a small smile. "Mom, she... she's wonderful. But she can be a bit overbearing.

Lelouch nodded. "She must be busy, what with keeping the house clean all by herself. That's what she does, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah." Suzaku tilted his head. "Yeah."

Lelouch paused. "Does your mom not work otherwise?"

Suzaku laughed a little uneasily. "Yeah... " Quickly: "Listen." He came to a halt in front of Lelouch's car. "I'm really grateful you came here to bring me my jacket." He paused, and the corners of his eyes creased with his sheepish smile. "And thanks for answering all of mom' questions."

Lelouch shrugged. "Of course. Is there a reason why you think I wouldn't answer your mom's questions?"

Suzaku didn't say anything for a while, and their eyes met beneath the darkening sky.

Lelouch thought, for a moment, that he might have seen something in them move. Something like a flash and subsequent dash, like a deer darting back in the forest as soon as one spots it.

"I dunno. I don't think you share well." Suzaku's voice seemed to hang in the air for a few moments.

"Share _what_, exactly?"

Suzaku shrugged a little. "I dunno. Your things. Your past."

Lelouch thought about it for a second. "Do you want me to?"

Tiny laughter fluttered through the air. "Maybe. I dunno. We're friends. But then everyone has things they don't like sharing."

"Truer words," Lelouch said, and looked away.

"Yeah, so. Thanks." Suzaku nodded, and then fell silent, and for a moment, they looked at each other. Like this, standing in front of Suzaku's house, crickets chirping in the lawn beyond, moon dangling in the air like a burst of white egg and the clouds blotting out the stars up ahead.

Atmospheric, really. Or it might have been, if Lelouch hadn't felt so nervous.

Lelouch shrugged, and broke the moment. "I thank you for the meal as well."

"Hey." Suzaku paused, and considered something. "Are you doing anything this weekend?"

Lelouch shrugged. "Breathing, for starters."

Suzaku laughed. "Ah, yeah. Anything more exciting than that?"

_Tolstoy? "_No._"_

Suzaku tilted his head. "D'you maybe wanna go out with me and my friends? I'm busy, so we don't hang out very often, but we usually do something Saturday evenings. Some beer and conversation and stuff." He shrugged. "You could bring a friend and... join us?"

Somewhere down there, below his collar bone but above his belt, something in Lelouch's body_ shook._

"That might be possible," he said neutrally.

Suzaku laughed. "Well, I understand if you don't. You're a very well-respected business man, after all, and are probably busy." Then, he took a step back, and rubbed the back of his head. "But, well... the offer stands."

"I'll think about it," Lelouch said. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

"Sure," Lelouch _saw_ more than heard Suzaku say.

And then he didn't see much of anything anymore because Suzaku smiled, one of those smiles that made the neurons around him buzz, and Lelouch stood there and realized only moments later that Suzaku had waved a few more times and then disappeared back into the house (out of which a wild gabble of Japanese drifted to him before the door closed and everything was cut off), and Lelouch stood there in front of his car calm as a Hindu cow, and without about as much intelligence.

Then Lelouch grinned, balled his hands into fists, and muttered, "Eureka."

Grin stretched across his face, he turned around and walked back to his car. Well, that had been easy, he thought. He was beautiful, rich, educated, spoke French, German, Italian - oh, right, and Russian, couldn't forget the Russian - and this would be as easy as predicting the rise of common stocks, of correctly predicting the business maneuvers of companies hailed by such plebeians as certain siblings, as -

Lelouch's eyes widened. Impossibly, impossibly wide.

"Ah -" He cringed. "Ow -" He cupped his groin. "Ouch - ow, ow, ow, ow -" His voice got higher, more high-pitched. "Argh -"

So, while he was on a clear-set course into Suzaku's figurative pants, he had somehow managed to drive his literal pants (and a sensitive area there) right into one of his car's side windows.

…. Well, certain deviations from the course were the norm. Occasionally.

* * *

_Hello Suzaku. I think I'll come to this party of yours, after all. Let me know the time and place._

_10:04 AM, from: LELOUCH._

* * *

_OH REALLY, THAT'S AWSM! GLAD TO HEAR THAT, IT'S AROUND 7 IS THAT OK? ^_^_

_10:45 AM, from: AS_

* * *

_That's fine, but WHY DO YOU ALWAYS TEXT ALL IN CAPS?_

_10:46 AM, from: LELOUCH_

* * *

_im sorry its just a habit of mine. i can change it if u like._

_11:38 AM, from: AS_

* * *

…_. Not like that, either. -_-_

_11:39 AM, from: LELOUCH_

* * *

_I'M SORRY? :(_

_1:01 PM, from: AS_

* * *

…_.Please just text me your friend's address._

_01:02 PM, from: LELOUCH_

* * *

_WOW U ALWAYS TXT BACK REALLY FAST! OKAY I'LL TXT IT IN A BIT. ^_^_

_1:40 PM, from: AS_

* * *

_Yes, I'm somewhat prompt with texts. I'll be there._

_1:41 PM, from: LELOUCH_

* * *

_^^;_

_2:03 PM, from: AS_

* * *

Sometimes, C.C. reminded him of a really critical movie-goer.

Observantly sitting in her seat and watching as the wonders of technology allowed for heart break, explosions, and cheesy orchestra score-chaperoned love scenes to flitter across the screen up front, but always with a pronounced impassivity scored across her features.

She was the cynical type of really critical movie-goer, though. The type to remark, "Oh, _that_ was logical," or, "That girl's getting old," or, "I'd rather give a behemoth a dental flossing than watch the sequel to this," while remaining on her seat, unmoving, slipping salty popcorn - or, in her case, greasy pizza - between her lips.

That would explain, maybe, why he had to listen to things like this:

"Well, don't you look exalted."

"Shut up," Lelouch said, rifling through his closet in search for an appropriate set of clothes. "I'm not talking to you."

"I could have sworn the way you just made your vocal cords swing would constitute as 'talking.'"

"Shut up." Lelouch threw a couple of shirts and pants - all designer clothes, _mais bien sur_ - on the bed, regarding them as critically as a mother a row of her son's prospective daughter-in-laws. "God, I don't have anything to wear."

To her credit, C.C. didn't make the obvious chick-joke at this point.

To her _dis_credit, she shrugged, and leaned against the door. "I wouldn't wear the Armani button-up. Clovis puked all over that last Christmas."

Lelouch groaned. "Oh, don't remind me."

C.C. shrugged. "He apparently fancies himself something of a fashion critic."

Lelouch tsssk'ed, and held up a couple of shirts to his chin, turning to the full-length mirror. "The Armani or the Hugo Boss?"

C.C. yawned demonstratively.

Lelouch rolled his eyes. "Right, you don't care about fashion. Don't you have some 4chan thread to troll?"

"4chan is child's play. I usually troll around in the deep web."

"Then what are you still doing here?" Hmm, maybe the beige looked a tad bit better on him... "I'm busy."

"Oh, I'm just waiting until you realize the obvious."

He gave her a _look_. "And what is that?"

"Who are you going to take?"

Lelouch paused at that, Armani and Hugo Boss and Oscar de la Renta taking a well-deserved vacation from the lit stage of his mental focus. "... Gino?"

C.C. sighed. "You're pathetic."

"...And your _blouse_ is the wrong color. Blue isn't you."

"... Point."

* * *

Gino had this habit of not merely picking up his phone, but _screaming _into it as if he were somehow paid by the ear doctors of the country to generate as much income as possible by causing ear fractures in the general population. "H'lo!"

"I can hear you," Lelouch growled. "So can my neighbors."

"Yeah." Gino's throaty laughter spiraled through the air. "What's up?"

All right, Lelouch told himself. He could do this.

"I need you to go to a party with me tonight at seven," Lelouch said. "I'd assume that the dress code is stylish casual, but considering you dress like a deafblind on their day off, I doubt it makes much of a difference."

"Whoa, whoa." Lelouch could vividly imagine Gino raising his hands in startled protest. "Can't. I have a date with Kallen tonight -"

Lelouch groaned, and let himself fall face-first onto his bed, then propped himself up on his elbows. "... On the money _I_ pay you."

"... Dude." Gino's amusement carried his voice. "Was that just a thinly-veiled threat?"

Lelouch shrugged. "If you feel inclined to take it that way, go ahead."

"Dude. Okay, right, let's get this straight." There was fumbling on the other end of the line. "It's about your thing for this pizza boy, right? Alice."

"His name is not Alice," Lelouch bit.

"It is about him, though, right?"

Lelouch scoffed.

"Maaaaan, I can't remember if I ever had it that bad before."

"Right, and your input is appreciated." He paused. "Not."

Gino laughed. "That's not what your mom said last ni -"

"You are not starting with those kinds of jokes." Lelouch's voice hiked up a tone. "You're not."

"Right, right. So, what's the story? He invited you to a party? Wants you to bring a friend?"

Lelouch groaned in reply.

"Makes sense. He probably thinks that would put you at ease." Pause. "And probably doesn't expect it would be hard for you to.."

"I had plenty of friends at Stanford," Lelouch bit.

"But here in Milwaukie, you call your secretary to go to a party."

Lelouch could just picture Gino nodding sagely. He himself chose to remain silent at that.

"Dude."

"Hmm?"

Gino's voice grew a little more serious. "I'll go, yanno? I'll bring Kallen too if that's okay."

"I don't mind." Lelouch felt petulant. "And I've only been in Milwaukie for about a year, and then I was busy founding my company, and then -"

"You don't have to justify yourself." Gino's voice was chipper. "I get it, man. I do." A pause. "So, who's the beau?"

Lelouch felt the itch to correct Gino's pronunciation of that French word, but held his tongue.

Gino went on regardless. "''Cause, man, I just realized that me going to this party means I'm going to meet him. That is _awesome_. Who is it? It's time you give me his name, if I'm going to be hanging out with him in a couple of hours. So far, we've only really referred to him as the 'pizza boy.' Well, and lately, 'Alice.'"

Lelouch averted his gaze, flexing it upon the linen of his sheets, then flipped onto his stomach.

His king-sized bed was big enough that he could make a snow angel in it if he ever bothered to cover its surface with something like snow. Big and wide, with glossy red silk sheets held up by real mahogany painstakingly handmade by gifted artisans somewhere in Lyon, and it was always -

Lelouch closed his eyes. "His name is Suzaku. Suzaku Kururugi."

Electronic blitzkrieg spat into Lelouch's ear as the other line went silent. Lelouch sighed. "Yes, I know. Strange name, I get it."

Still no response.

Lelouch wondered if the connection had been cut. "Hello?"

"You... like Suzaku Kururugi." A faint chuckle came from Gino's end of the line. "You... you like Suzaku Kururugi." The chuckle morphed into full laughter, loud and echoing and sharp in Lelouch's ear. "You... you fucking like... Suzaku - bwahahaha."

Lelouch's eyebrow slid together. "The fuck are you going on about?" And, more importantly: "Wait, you _know _him?"

More laughter.

"Dude." It sounded like Gino tried - and then failed - to compose himself. "Dude. Tell me the address he sent you."

"Fuck you," Lelouch spat.

Gino reined in his laughter enough to say, "Please?"

Mumbling something about impossible secretaries and their antics and C.C. and the stock market, for good measure, Lelouch pulled up the text with the address, and read it aloud.

"Oh man." Gino laughed. "Oh man, this will be good."

"Gino." If his life were a movie, Lelouch thought, that one word would have been accompanied by a Darth Vader-esque warped voice. Like, "Ggggino," with black smoke whisking out of his nostrils and his eyes glowing. "Make sense or I use your body to make ball sack soup. Choose wisely."

Gino, for his part, seemed undeterred by Lelouch's brief fandom confusion. "I know where that is. And I know Suzaku - or well, I don't know him that well personally, but I don't think I have to."

Lelouch could _see_ that grin. Even though this wasn't a voice call, and Gino lived on the end of town. That was some sort of metaphysical accomplishment. That, or Lelouch just had an overly dramatic imagination. "What does that mean?"

"Meet me at the Starbucks near the office, kay?"

"I can't wait," Lelouch said, and watched himself step up to the gallows, the executioner glaring at him from beneath bushy eyebrows and the rope swinging limply in the breeze.

… It was probably the overly dramatic imagination, he decided.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Lelouch arrived at the designated Starbucks, searched the entire cafe only to yield no finding of grinning, bottle-blonde Ken dolls yet, ordered a Venti-sized iced Americano, and proceeded to terrorize Gino's cell phone until said secretary finally walked in a couple of minutes later.

"Took you long enough," Lelouch said while flipping his phone shut and sliding it back into his pocket.

The first thing that Lelouch noticed upon seeing Gino was that he didn't look nearly as bouncy as usual. His usual shit-eating grin was absent, replaced by an almost sympathetic smile. When he slid into the seat opposite of Lelouch's, he held onto his eyes, and kept smiling that tiny, private smile. "Dude."

Lelouch took a large sip of coffee; the ice tingled and popped in his mouth. "Don't look at me like I'm a mewling puppy on the snow-covered edge of a highway."

"Did not," Gino said, looking the most offended Lelouch had seen him in a while.

"So did." Lelouch pinned him with a _look_.

"Did not," Gino said.

"... Gino, I do not believe it is befitting of a CEO and a secretary to have a debate on the level of grade schoolers. And I don't have all night." He threw a pointed look at his wrist watch. "We have to go to this party-cum-get-together in something like half an hour."

Gino gave him an awed look. "Given the circumstances, that is the most unfortunate use of this Latin word I've ever seen."

Lelouch threw a straw wrapper at Gino.

Gino caught it, and _finally_ broke into his usual Gino-grin. "You like Suzaku Kururugi." _Grin_. "I can't decide if this is the fucking funniest or the fucking most terrifying thing I've ever heard."

In retrospect, Lelouch felt a little stupid at not having seriously considered the possibility that Gino might _know _Suzaku before. After all, he'd just been told a few days ago - "It's a small town. Most people in such small towns know each other -"

But he just hadn't _seriously _considered they might know each other. Coincidences like that, he'd thought, only happened in stories, staged reality TV shows, or those cheap romance novels with half-naked women on the cover with hair that looked like it came straight out of a shampoo commercial.

...In retrospect, the fact that Lelouch used to wonder what brand of shampoo those women used more than he paid attention to the generous cleavage that hair regularly dipped into may or may not have been a sign...

In any case. Lelouch decided that rather than reminiscing about the shampoo models of his past he better deal with the case at hand, and leaned forward a little on his coffee table. "Out with it already." He searched for Gino's eyes. "What do you know about Suzaku Kururugi?"

Gino shrugged. "He used to be..." And he trailed off dramatically.

Lelouch gave him a _look_. "What? A two-timing prostitute? A testosterone-bloated former illegal experimentation specimen? What?"

"A basketball star," Gino said, and the tension in the air kind of deflated with all the whining of a balloon blowing out air.

It made Lelouch slump a little in his chair. "Oh wow. That's wild. Next thing you tell me he has a basic understanding of calculus on top of that and I fear I'm going to be rendered speechless in awe."

Gino shook his head. "No, not just _any_ basketball star." He paused for dramatic effect. "He was... well, one could say he was sort of this town's hope for a while. People were talking about how he might make it big in the NBA, and things like that.. On top of that, he was loaded. Positively _loaded_, man. Like, comes-to-school-every-day-in-a-luxury-car loaded."A look of longing flitted over Gino's features before the grin reclaimed its territory. "People who hated and loved him, and loved him yet hated him or hated him yet loved him, could probably be divided roughly into four equal quarters. If you were a high school student in Milwaukie, you had an opinion on Suzaku Kururugi."

Lelouch said nothing for a while; he let his eyes trail over the furniture set against the soft trinkling of the lounge music streaming into the posh little cafe, and thought. "Why?"

Gino gave him a smile, one that he rarely showed. Not the dopey grin that usually split his face into half, but a small, pensive one. "Because if you're in the spotlight like that, every little thing you do is magnified and stretched out of proportion, I think."

Lelouch nodded. "So he was a controversial basketball star. And? He's a pizza boy now."

"I dunno." Gino scratched the back of his neck for a bit. "When he was in his senior year..." He dropped his hand, and leaned in a little closer, grinning in conspiracy, "... he disappeared for about half a year, leaving his team hanging, and losing his potential scholarship to any college that might have accepted him on his athletic merits. The official story was that he was called to Japan during that time for some family business - nobody really knows what really happened, or those who do don't tell, whichever. His reputation never recovered. You don't know the kinds of wild rumors that _circulated _at the time."

Lelouch listened silently, rolling the new information over in his head.

"And then..." Gino continued, "you know, just like that." Gino popped his tongue, and held up his hand, flattening the back of it. "From top," and he made the little 'wheeeep' sound associated with crashing air planes, and let his hand nose dive onto the coffee table, "to rock-bottom. That's Suzaku Kururugi, right there."

* * *

Lelouch and Gino spent the next couple of minutes in heated discussion at the local Starbucks. Lelouch's voice continuously rode up and down from the shore of bewilderment down to the lake of resignation and up again, whereas Gino seemed content enough telling stories at the even plane of amusement that only once in a while hiked up Mount Envy.

At one point, Lelouch finally dared to ask a question that had been occupying him for a while. "So, you don't think he's…"

"Gay?"

"Well, yes."

Gino grinned, and shrugged his massive shoulders. "No idea. Rumor has it he banged the entire cheerleading squad, but I can't say."

Lelouch wrinkled his nose. "I'm surprised there's something even you don't know."

Gino shrugged again. "It was high school, man. He was simply not in the kind of social group that could afford to be gay."

Lelouch raised an eyebrow. "What, being gay is a membership-only club now?"

Gino grinned. "You would know."

Lelouch threw another straw at him.

Gino caught it, again. "Hey, man, all I'm saying is that I don't know. Him and I weren't close. We didn't go to the same high school and all. Kallen did, but she doesn't really like him."

Lelouch frowned. "She doesn't?"

"No. Something about Suzaku and Kallen's best friend while she was in high school, something like that, eh, I don't even know. You know, Kallen and I don't exactly talk about Suzaku when we're together." He paused, grinning. "Or, you know, talk at all –"

"I get it, Gino. Kindly spare me the M-rated details."

Gino shrugged. "But you know, that address he sent you? Where we're going tonight? I know where it is."

Lelouch unconsciously leaned forward on the table a bit. "Who?"

Gino looked down at his iced tall chai latte. "You know, one thing I never understood about Starbucks is, why is the smallest size 'tall'? I mean, it isn't even tall, and why is 'small' 'tall'?" He put his massive hand over the top of his drink. "It's like –"

"Gino," Lelouch groaned. "Tell me who it is _right now_ or -"

"All right, all right, all right, okay, okay, okay. Remember when we went to the porn store? There was this girl there who looked at you for one second and immediately knew you were gay."

Lelouch nodded. "Milly. Right?"

White flashed from between Gino's lips when he grinned. "Yeah. She's been Suzaku's best friend since they were little."

Lelouch blinked. "What? _That _woman?"

"Hey, Milly's cool." Gino shrugged. "I've never been that close to Suzaku, but Milly's awesome."

"His best friend's... that woman?" Lelouch repeated, with all the social grace of a robot with Google Translate as a language center.

Gino shrugged. "I don't know, I think I heard that they first got close because he was the only one who let her put make-up on him."

Lelouch stared.

Gino laughed. "What, didn't you know that those two knew each other? Come on, it's -"

Lelouch threw another straw then.

This time, it hit Gino in the shoulder.

Progress. That's what it was.

* * *

Kallen arrived about half an hour later in a red torpedo of clicking heels and bright colors. Predictably, she seemed less than pleased to hear she was going to Suzaku's (or, as it had turned out, to _Milly's_) party.

"We're going to hang out with Milly and… Suzaku? Kururugi?" She threw a look from Gino back to Lelouch. "Um, why?"

"He's the boss's new friend," Gino said.

Lelouch didn't particularly like the way he said 'friend.' Nor that little 'wink wink, nudge, nudge' business.

As it turned out, Kallen didn't know all that much more about Suzaku than Gino did.

She made comments such as:"I don't hate him anymore, I mean,I don't exactly _like _him, but it's been _years_ since high school, so…" followed up by remarks such as, "Yeah, he was a bit of a playboy, why?" or "The school was very disappointed when he ditched the team for their final match. We might have won the state championship in basketball otherwise," and most damning of all, "Why are you interested?"

"Private business," Gino said.

Lelouch angled up his foot to make sure Gino knew what he thought of his comment with a well-timed kick into another _private business_, but Gino expertly caught his foot and _tugged_.

Lelouch slid forward on his chair until he was propped up on his elbows, trying very hard _not _to look like someone who just just literally had his leg pulled by his secretary.

Kallen sent them both quizzical looks.

Lelouch kicked at Gino's hand with his other leg, managed to free himself, and then straightened himself in his chair, giving Kallen a practiced smile. "Him and Milly are two people I recently befriended."

There was a brief, brief moment, when Kallen wrinkled her nose and _looked _at him, when Lelouch feared that Kallen might have connected the dots between the sudden appearance of Lelouch's pretend-girlfriend 'Alice' and his sudden interest in the history of one Suzaku Kururugi - but then she shrugged and thankfully dispelled that theory.

"Okay," she said, then shook her head and smiled. "So, are we going to that party?"

Lelouch and Gino nodded with varying levels of enthusiasm (Lelouch somberly and Gino with the hoot of a car full of frat boys calling after a leggy blond), drained their cups of coffee, and got up.

On his way out, Lelouch ran into a mousy-haired boy with violet eyes he'd never seen before.

"I'm sorry," the boy stuttered, searching for Lelouch's eyes. "I was just -"

"That's all right," Lelouch said, and pushed past the boy to join Gino and Kallen waiting by the entrance.

Once there, Lelouch paused, his memory spurred. Hadn't he seen that boy before -

He stood there for a moment searching his memory.

Then, he shrugged, decided it didn't matter, and followed his employees.

* * *

For what seemed like an eternity but had in reality been less than a day, Lelouch had been anticipating what he in his head called The Party (capitalized) with anticipation that was somewhere in between that of a high school girl awaiting prom and that of a Harold Camping fan awaiting the Rapture.

The only parties Lelouch had really been to since graduating college had been of the business banquet and gala kind at which the main function, rather than socializing, had always been conducting business and comparing clothing. Thus, the reality rather predictably fell short of his expectations.

Suzaku greeted them at the door, smiling. "Hey." His eyes fell on Gino and Kallen, and widened a little in recognition. "Hey..."

Not so much a party as a little get-together, inside the apartment the woman Lelouch recognized as Milly-from-the-porn-store sat at a table artfully decorated with several bottles of beer and one or two packs of cigarettes.

Upon noticing Lelouch, Gino, and Kallen's arrival, she grinned, and waved at them. "Heya. Gino, great to see you. Kallen, hey."

Once again, it occurred to Lelouch how stupid it had been to overestimate this town's size and neglect the possibility of all of them already knowing each other.

He dimly considered that his life was starting to resemble one of those soap operas where the girlfriends of any two-timing individual invariably knew of each other, only with less of the screaming and hair-pulling. He was too dignified for that.

Then Milly threw him a fire-cracker grin, and said, "Well, if that isn't the one from the store the other day," and Lelouch's assessment of dignity was promptly put to rest.

Kallen and Suzaku looked at him in surprise. "The store?"

Lelouch cleared his throat, let his gaze flutter from one of them to other, and said, "So, what kind of alcohol do we have here?"

* * *

Sitting around a table with Suzaku, Kallen, Gino, and Milly gave Lelouch ample opportunity to observe how each of them interacted with each other. It also gave him the opportunity to ogle how nice Suzaku looked (he wore red today; Lelouch had _so_ known he would look great in red -), but that was beside the point. Seriously.

So far, after an hour of sipping on vodka mixed with Red Bull on a dingy kitchen table with specks of white wood showing beneath and cramped in between Suzaku and Gino, he had come to the following assessments:

Gino and Suzaku: friendly enough, but with a noted distance.

Kallen and Suzaku: friendly enough, but with an even wider distance, and the occasional awkward silence and spiteful glare from Kallen that Suzaku dropped his head at.

Milly and... everyone else: trying hard to stay afloat beneath this woman's level of energy - except for Suzaku, who just seemed to drift along with her zest. Lelouch could see how they were supposedly best friends; it was easy to see in the way they seemed to communicate without words, and in he smiled at her teasing comments and let them roll of his back easily.

As for himself and everyone else, it was mostly... well, supremely awkward.

"You all right there, man?" Gino asked at some point, raising his eyebrows at him.

"Of course," Lelouch said, and downed another cup of vodka mixed with red bull.

After about another hour of this, Lelouch seemed to feel Milly's gaze on him a lot. She was looking at him rather like he was a very interesting animal at a zoo.

Lelouch met her eyes across the lull of conversation (Gino and Suzaku were talking about... something, football maybe?) and raised an eyebrow at her.

Milly smiled at him, and then turned to Suzaku. "So, how did it go with Shirley?"

If this were a cartoon, this is the part where Lelouch's ears would have grown and rotated into the direction of Suzaku and Milly.

Since this wasn't, Lelouch remained where he was, cup of alcohol casually poised at his lips.

He could hear Suzaku _fidgeting _next to him. "Why, did she say something?"

"Oho~" Milly laughed. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Suzaku gave an uneasy laugh. "It was nothing. I drove her home from the hospital last week."

Milly laughed, and that's when Kallen started a conversation with Lelouch, and he missed the rest of the sentence.

_Damn_.

Lelouch set his mouth on auto-pilot while he continued to listen for Milly and Suzaku's conversation, but they had fallen into hushed conversation that eclipsed Lelouch's edge of hearing.

When he stole a glance away from Kallen, he caught Milly staring right at him.

She noticed his look, and reciprocated with the most sympathetic look he'd ever seen on her.

* * *

Some time a bit later, when Lelouch had exchanged enough small talk with every one of the other people at the gathering to fill his annual quota of it and he still felt like the progress he'd made with Suzaku hovered around the 0.01 percentile, Lelouch got up and excused himself to the bathroom.

Milly offered to show him where it was, and followed him out of the living room.

Upon exiting the bathroom, she was still there, waiting for him. A gigantic pink bubble she'd blown with her bubble gum popped in front of her mouth, and an equally pink tongue darted out to lick up the traces splattered around her mouth.

Lelouch looked at her for a second, at her tight red tank top and Daisy Dukes so short they might have passed as a belt in some of the social circles Lelouch was used to, and then back up at her eyes and brightly-smiling face.

"Is he dating her?" Lelouch asked.

Milly smiled, and shook her head.

Lelouch threw a look around, then took her by the arm and pulled her aside.

Somewhere beyond, Gino's boisterous laughter rang through the air.

"Then what did you bait him for in front of me?"

Milly laughed. "Oh, so you aren't even going to hide you're interested in him?" She paused, and her grin widened. "Of course, now the pizza boy porn thing makes so much sense. I could arrange for a discount next time you stop by~"

Lelouch flinched. "It's not like that. I'm just -"

Milly nodded at him. "Right. Sure. Don't worry." She winked at him. "I like learning of people's secrets, but I don't like leaking them. Iiii'm not telling him."

That _did_ make Lelouch feel better. A little. "Right. You didn't answer my question. You brought this Shirley girl up for my benefit, didn't you?"

Milly glanced over Lelouch's shoulder for a moment before settling her eyes back on his. "Because you seem to think he's someone he's not." She shrugged. "And he isn't."

Lelouch thought it over for a second. "But you just said she wasn't his girlfriend -"

"Ah-ah." Milly raised her finger, and wagged it at him. "You're doing it again. Jumping to conclusions."

"So what are you trying to -"

"What I'm trying to say is," she said, and placed both her hands on Lelouch's shoulders, "is that you might want to consider what it is you really want from him."

Lelouch looked into her blue eyes for once, and thought that she was pretty much a female Gino, which led to him self-sniping with an involuntary image of Gino's giant legs spreading out from beneath the hem of a a pair of hot pants, which made him shudder, which in turn sort of ruined the moment.

Outwardly, he held Milly's gaze. "Well, if you could just tell me what I can expect of him -"

"Ah-ah!" Milly laughed, and wagged her finger at him again. "Like I said: I like knowing secrets." A wink. "But I'm not one to leak them."

* * *

Long ago, back in England, when Lelouch had been sitting in the garden with his book (_On the Road_ by Jack Kerouac, if memory served right - in English, sadly), his brother Clovis had sat down next to him on the clammy grass, their bald pink knees knocking together.

"You know," Clovis had said, "You have this thing. This thing where you have brilliant plans, but you're kind of so confident that they'll never fail that you don't think them through as well as you could."

Back then, Lelouch snorted at him, and turned a page, girly hair falling into his eyes like a fringe, and that had been that.

He'd never given that theory much credibility, and he didn't now.

Funny, though, that he was remembering it now.

* * *

Near the end of the party, when the conversations had gained a certain lull to them, people started to throw glances at their watch, and the formerly nigh-unconquerable Mount Everest of beer bottles had shrunken down to your friendly neighborhood hill, something unplanned occurred.

"Let's play a game," Milly announced.

Apparently, the sound of her cheery voice saying those words had etched itself into the DNA of every male present to signify impending catastrophe, artfully demonstrated by both Gino and Suzaku visibly flinching.

"Truth or dare?" Suzaku asked.

"Nothing quite like that." She laughed, stood up, took one of the spoons on the table, and started to twirl it like a magic wand. "It's sort of like a get-to-know-you game."

In another world, where she didn't make a living selling people jack-off material, she might have made a good television announcer, Lelouch thought.

"It's like this." She pointed the spoon at Kallen. "You say something like 'favorite color,' or 'favorite subject in school,' or 'words that start with K,' or something, and everyone has to contribute."

"That's a lot more humane than I expected of you," Gino said.

Milly nodded. "Right. Who starts?"

Silence settled around the table.

Lelouch took another sip of his drink. He was starting to feel a little light-headed. "Aren't you drinking?" he asked Suzaku, noticing that the other boy hadn't touched his cup all night.

Suzaku smiled, and shook his head. "Can't. I'm driving."

"Oh - ow." He glared at Milly. "Don't whack me with a spoon!"

"You have this habit of not listening to announcements, I can already tell." Milly nodded sagely. "So, I'll start. Favorite color?"

Suzaku thought about it for a second. "Red."

"Blue," Gino said.

"Red," Kallen said.

Everyone turned to Lelouch. He blinked. "Green."

Milly and Gino both flashed him the same identical grin.

Lelouch rolled his eyes.

Gino threw a look around. "Right. Favorite movie?"

Kallen laughed. "Karate Kid."

Suzaku rolled his eyes heavenward in thought for a moment. "Mine might be Forrest Gump. I think?"

"Black Swan," Milly said.

Everyone looked at Lelouch.

"I'm not telling," Lelouch said, and sipped on his drink.

"He loved Titanic," Gino said.

Lelouch elbowed him.

Milly and Kallen laughed. Suzaku chuckled a little. "Well," he admitted, winking at Lelouch, "the sinking part was very well done."

The world kind of stirred and then fell apart at the sight of that wink. Until it was put back together with super glue that brimmed with tension when Kallen smiled at Lelouch and said, "Romance status?"

Milly popped her gum with a grin. "Single."

Gino looked at Kallen. "Well, everyone here knows about me already."

Lelouch stole a look over to Suzaku.

Suzaku shrugged with a mild smile. "Yeah. I'm single, too." He looked at Lelouch. "How about you?"

Lelouch looked at Suzaku. "Me too."

And for a moment, it was perfect, a perfect moment of looking into _whoa, green,_ and forgetting about all else, until -

"Wait." Kallen blinked. "What about Alice?"

"Alice?" Suzaku echoed, looking at her.

"Ali~ice~?" Milly sing-songed, mischief in her eyes.

_Oh. Fuck._

Kallen looked around. "Yeah. Alice, that girl that -"

Lelouch looked at Gino. Pleadingly. (_Come on, help me, help me, do something, distract them, somehow, come on _-)

Gino gave him a sheepish look. (_What am I supposed to do, man?_)

"Do you have a girlfriend named Alice?" Milly asked him, mirth in her eyes.

Lelouch squirmed, and continued to look at Gino. _(Come on, I'm your boss.)_

Gino shrugged._ (Sorry, no go, man)._

Lelouch sighed._ (Fine. Fine. Pay raise, effective immediately)._

Gino grinned, _(Sweeeeet)_ and shot up to his feet so fast it startled the entire table.

Kallen, Milly, Suzaku, and Lelouch all gaped at the giant in their midst, standing up straight like an overzealous first-grader at the annual spelling bee contest.

"Alice!" Gino barked. "Alice! Who the fuck is Alice!"

Baffled silence reigned. And stretched on. And on. And on. Eons passed.

Then Gino plopped down on the couch, and grinned at Lelouch. _(I was awesome, right_?)

Lelouch stared at Gino until he realized that he really didn't have enough alcohol in his system, and he shakily refilled his glass to down it in one go. And then another.

At the very least, the subject of Lelouch's imaginary girlfriend was dropped for the remainder of the evening. The last of the beer was drained among the five of them, the clock ground ever on, and the alcohol level in Lelouch's blood rose steadily.

At one point, Lelouch decided that that was probably the only thing left _steady _here, after noticing that everyone's face had the habit of multiplying and rotating.

After a while, Lelouch noticed that Suzaku took special interest in him, asking him how he was, how he felt, if he could drive home. Lelouch assured him he was fine, but Suzaku didn't seem convinced, only slumping back in his seat with a tiny, tiny smile.

It was Kallen who eventually voiced the obvious, in the midst of shrugging into her jacket and thanking Milly for the evening. "He can't drive home," she said. "Who will take him?"

"I can," Suzaku said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Then, guilt seemed to flit across his face, and he turned to Lelouch. "If you don't mind, that is? Do you want me to drive you home?"

Lelouch didn't really trust himself to speak, but somehow he didn't embarrass himself too much when he said, "No, that will be fine."

The knowing grins of both Gino and Milly followed them as they left the apartment.

* * *

When Suzaku and Lelouch stepped out into the open, they were greeted by rain.

"At least I can't say it isn't raining anymore now," Lelouch said sardonically.

Suzaku laughed, and took Lelouch by the shoulder. "Come on. My car's over there. Are you okay? Do you feel really drunk?"

"Not that drunk." Lelouch paused. "I do, however, feel like I might wake up dead in a dumpster tomorrow." _Also, you have a halo. Heh._

Suzaku looked confused. "Lelouch, you can't wake up if you're _dead_."

Lelouch thought that over for a second. "No, I guess I can't."

Suzaku broke into a careful smile. "Come on. One step after another. This way -"

Suzaku's car, much like his house, was simple and way beyond its point of glory.

Lelouch didn't care right now, though. He didn't protest when Suzaku opened the door to the passenger seat, and he didn't say anything when Suzaku started the engine next to him, and shrugged the car into the slick street.

Lelouch just leaned back into the seat, and busied himself with watching the blue rain drops clinging to the windows; he watched as the fat ones stayed in place while the thin ones tore themselves apart and sped down along the glass, leaving a wet line behind that was about as schizophrenically zig-zag as his own steps would probably be right now if a police officer asked him to demonstrate his sobriety.

His thoughts sloshed around in his head sluggishly, moving from side to side and aligning back in the center of his awareness every once in a while when Suzaku hit a bump in the road. The entire car would bob for a second, elevating Lelouch above the sad existence of his own mired drunkenness for just a second before they crashed back into the road.

Lelouch remained silent.

So did Suzaku.

Romantically, the last thing Lelouch thought before drifting off into a short, uneasy slumber was that Suzaku's car sort of smelled like him.

(Not so romantically, said slumber gifted him with an uneasy dream of him and Suzaku having sex in a bar bathroom).

* * *

Lelouch awoke to Suzaku shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Lelouch." His voice was gentle, but firm. "Lelouch, get up."

Lelouch snapped his eyes open, the image of his dream shredding in the center. "It's not what it looks like," he said shrilly, panicked.

Suzaku blinked. "You... were not just napping in my car?"

Lelouch paused. "…No, it's _exactly_ what it looks like."

Suzaku smiled, soft and sweet and gentle. "Right. Let's get you of here."

Lelouch shuddered at the touch of Suzaku's hands on his own when he slowly guided him out of the car, holding on to his shoulder and hand.

A rain drop slipped into Lelouch's shirt and left a line down his back, as stray and without orientation as the ones on the window. Lelouch braced himself for more rain drops, and noticed only when none of them came that Suzaku had spun an umbrella above the both of them.

Lelouch looked up at Suzaku.

Suzaku's eyes had that thing about them when they wrinkled at the corners when he smiled, Lelouch decided. It was something he had noticed before, but back then he hadn't really paid it as much mind as he did now.

It reminded him of that silly emoticon that Suzaku had sent him in his text message yesterday. The eye-smile. Was it possible to smile with one's eyes?

"… in there," Suzaku said.

Lelouch blinked. "What?"

Surprise stretched across Suzaku's features before he seemed to understand that Lelouch had not caught the first part of his sentence. "I said that you should better get in there." He nodded over to the right.

Lelouch followed the nod with his eyes. Right. His house.

Big and lavish and bloated with wealth, with the sloped roof and now rain-glistening walls atop an opulent drive way lined by azaleas.

"Right," Lelouch said out loud, and every blink of his eye coordinated to the veil of alcohol lifting just the teeniest bit further. "Right."

Suzaku placed a hand on Lelouch's back, and applied gentle pressure, guiding him to his house.

The driveway's wet stones popped beneath the soles of Lelouch's dressing shoes and Suzaku's sneakers. The rain drummed against the baby blue umbrella, streamed down along the ridges, tumbled down in a thick veil at the edge and then splashed down into the ground.

Not a single light shone inside Lelouch's darkened house. C.C. must have gone to bed, or maybe she was in her basement, Lelouch thought absently.

"What… what's the time?" Lelouch asked, shaking his head to himself.

"Almost one."

Lelouch nodded, and looked down at their feet. Him and Suzaku almost walked in perfect tandem, like marching soldiers – right, left, right, left, right –

And then Suzaku stopped walking.

Lelouch looked up, and noticed they were now standing right in front of his own front door (Hand-made in Naples from Norwegian wood, $30,000) leading into Lelouch's house (designed by himself, parts imported from Italy, France, the Maldives and Qatar for a combined cost of about $700,000) with Suzaku (…without measure).

Suzaku's voice wafted through the air softly, like a whisk of perfume. "You should go in now." He squeezed Lelouch's shoulder. "Thank you for coming to my party. I'm sorry if my friends made you drink a bit too much. They can be a bit…. zealous –"

"No," Lelouch heard himself say. "It was my decision to drink." He could feel faint tongues of heat radiating off of Suzaku's skin when Lelouch brushed against his bare arms. Suzaku's scent worked itself into Lelouch's nostrils, mixing with the smell of rain, the stink of wet pavement, and the scent of moronic yet hopeful dreams.

"Suzaku," Lelouch said. Testing how the word formed in his mouth, how it tasted. He turned around to face Suzaku, beneath the umbrella, and raised his eyes to meet his.

"Yeah?"

A single rain drop pearled on Suzaku's temple, flattening a curl against his skin_. (It was now or never)._ His eyes shone down at Lelouch curiously_. (What did Lelouch have to lose? What?)_ Suzaku placed a hand on Lelouch's shoulder, and tilted his head as if to ask, 'What's wrong?_' (Maybe everything. But it may be worth it anyhow.)_

In reality, it happened within the span of a mere second, but to Lelouch, it seemed to be a slide-show. He stretched out his hands, and wrapped them around Suzaku's waist. He took a step forward. He brought their chests together in a hug, until he had his cheek pressed against Suzaku's temple.

If Suzaku's skin had burned mildly when they'd brushed their arms together earlier, it was positively searing now.

Lelouch's heart beat hopped up to the back of his throat, lodged there, and prevented any word from leaving his mouth no matter how much he tried.

The umbrella dropped.

Rain drilled down at them both within moments. The wetness trickled down along Lelouch's neck, scuttled down his spine, snaked around his waist and halted just before the front of his pants.

Lelouch shivered, his nipples hardening. Everything was cold, cold, except for Suzaku, who was warm, warm –

It took Lelouch a couple of moments to place that it had been him who had spoken when he heard a voice say, "Do you want to… come in?"

When he realized what he'd said, his heart plummeted from his throat down to his stomach, then trampolined back up to his throat, ping-pong. Ping-pong.

But before Lelouch had the time to beat himself up for making such blatant moves on Suzaku, he decided to be quiet and wait. Wait for Suzaku's answer, like this, with his heart beating at the back of his throat like a trapped animal. Wait, for Suzaku to say yes and come inside (_hah_) and then –

Lelouch felt the soft pressure of Suzaku's hands on his shoulders, pushing him away.

Lelouch raised his face, met Suzaku's eyes, and waited.

Suzaku looked good like this, with the rain running down his cheek and dangling off the clear-cut edge of his jaw. Really good – or maybe he just looked good in everything and in every situation (would he look good in a frog costume? Would he look good in a skirt? Where were these thoughts coming from, he was just too nervous, and he was avoiding thinking about what he's just offered, and - )

For a tightly-woven moment of crystallizing tension that ebbed and flowed from violet to green amidst the calming sizzle of the rain, Lelouch hoped.

Then Suzaku gave him a look that Lelouch couldn't quite read – a little apprehensive, a little apologetic, a little confused, with the eyebrows drooping – and then he bent down to get the umbrella, and held out the baby blue piece of rain equipment to Lelouch like a peace offering.

Or a slip of rejection. "I'm sorry," Suzaku said. He smiled; it was small, wistful, thoughtful. "You should go inside."

* * *

C.C. wasn't up and waiting for him like Lelouch had feared she might be when he stepped into the house. Instead, it lay there cold and empty, with the darkness coiling in the corners.

Lelouch walked inside, and closed the door behind him.

Then he went into the kitchen to drink a glass of orange juice. He walked up the stairs to his room, and into the bathroom, sprinkling cold water against his face and trying to finally sober up entirely.

He blinked at himself in the mirror. A face blinked back at him, violet eyes blazing and ink-hair matted against his pale skin.

Lelouch shook his head to himself, tore his eyes away, and walked into his bedroom.

It was only then that he consciously allowed the thoughts to slip past the barrier where they had been trying to burst through that he paused.

Suzaku had… rejected him.

He had. There was no alternative interpretation. This wasn't fucking modern art.

Suzaku had apologized and then he'd gone, and he had _understood_ that Lelouch had offered him more than just a cup of tea or coffee there, had understood it or else he wouldn't have looked at him like that, which meant that Lelouch had gone all-in and been defeated at the dealing of the final card.

Shame was a dreadful net roping his insides together in a painful churn.

Lelouch didn't scream, or cry. He didn't have a childish fit of any kind, and actually behaved like what could have been expected of someone of his status and wealth.

He just sat there, thought, and decided to dedicate all his future efforts to damage control.

* * *

The door bell rang some ten minutes later. It ripped Lelouch out of his reverie, and he threw a disoriented look around, blinking against the dread.

He felt sober. Very, very sober.

Slipping into his house sandals next to the bed, Lelouch shuffled down to the bottom of the stairs, and then swerved over to the front door, opening it.

"Hi," green eyes said. Or perhaps, Lelouch supposed, a mouth somewhere below those eyes, but he hadn't gotten there yet.

"Hello," Lelouch said automatically.

Suzaku looked conflicted. His hair looked much darker against his skin than it usually was when it was dry and soft.

"Lelouch," he said, and fidgeted a little on the spot. He drew his eyes to the floor, at the polished, picture-perfect carpet.

"Yes?" Lelouch said. Cold. Waiting.

The rain continued to fall, onto Suzaku and around him, against the ground and the bushes and the roof up ahead; a constant, monochromatic sizzle and rustle and trickle.

"I…" Suzaku raised his eyes to meet Lelouch's, and then looked away again. "I was going to drive home, but then I suddenly wondered if I hadn't made a mistake. If I hadn't…" He met Lelouch's eyes again. "… Misunderstood."

Since Lelouch had been very little, he had made the experience that he sometimes came very close to the out-of-body tales he would sometimes hear of in magazines or on television, only less dramatic and without any kind of supernatural connotations.

Sometimes, he would just feel like his emotions detached themselves from his body and floated by his side as they watched Reason and Logic take over the host body.

This was one of those moments.

Lelouch felt himself give Suzaku a mild smile. "You might have. I didn't think you would react like this to a simple invitation to have some tea."

Suzaku looked at him. Torn. "It… it's just… when you hugged me." The corners of his eyebrows lowered. "I thought you wanted to… I thought you were inviting me in for something else..."

Lelouch's heart _ached_ for a moment. Just for a moment, but swift and cruel like a knife's slash.

Suzaku went on, "That is why… I had to decline, but –"

"You were wrong." Lelouch gave him a small smile. "What, did you think I was interested in you?" He laughed a little, and threw an exasperated look around. If he hadn't felt so miserable, he might have congratulated himself for his acting skills. "It's nothing like that, I assure you."

He looked back at Suzaku, eyes slightly narrowed in arrogance, and brushed a strand of hair behind his ears. "I was drunk, and you had come all the way here just to see me off, it only seemed polite to invite you in. Don't you think so?"

Suzaku stood still amidst the wafting rain for a moment. His eyes rolled up for a moment, signaling that he was thinking it over.

Lelouch smiled. "So, if there's anything else –"

Suzaku took a small step forward. "Lelouch." He searched for Lelouch's eyes, found them – and then broke into a smile. Not the small smiles from before, not the concerned ones while Lelouch had been drinking and when they drove home, but the ones from the door step.

The ones that always, always, made something inside Lelouch move.

"Lelouch," he repeated, and then put his hand on Lelouch's shoulder in a soft, platonic gesture. "I'm glad we had this talk." He smiled, wider, looking completely relieved.

Lelouch's heart sank, but outwardly, he only looked at Suzaku quizzically. "Why?" He snorted a little. "Hey, I've got to say, if I swung that way I wouldn't think I was such a bad option, really."

Suzaku laughed. "No, no, not at all. I didn't mean it like that." He removed his hand from Lelouch's shoulder, and let it drop to his side. "I'm just glad we cleared it up. No more misunderstandings."

Suzaku then delivered the blow with such a disgustingly sincere smile that for a few moments after Suzaku had spoken, Lelouch wasn't quite sure if it had been his words of that smile that had punched out his stomach like that.

"Because to be honest, for a second… I was tempted." He gave a small, apologetic smile. "I'm bisexual, you know. Not very many people know this. It's not really a secret, but not something I go around telling everyone about, either."

Lelouch gaped.

Suzaku gave him a sheepish smile. "I hope you don't mind that I'm bi?"

Lelouch shook his head.

Suzaku nodded. "Great. So, I'm glad that this cleared it up and that it reminded me what we are." And he gave Lelouch the most sincere, unwavering smile. "Friends. Right?"

* * *

This time, Lelouch didn't need C.C. or Gino or Kallen or anyone else to tell him to know that he had fucked up.

He toed off his shoes and walked into his house, past a Monet painting, and then angled up a designer staircase back up to his room, feeling like he was shuffling through the house, blind.

It was when only when he fell onto the bed, listless (again) and let his head fallback against the pillow (again), that he started to laugh.

Because sometimes, when everything was just so absurd and Murphy's law had once again been proven to be correct, there was just nothing else to do but laugh.

So laugh he did. First high and almost manical, then gradually petering off to quieter and desperate, and then dying into a few scatters of giggles here and there.

"Congratulations, Lelouch," he told himself, ironically, "I don't believe there is any way in which you could have fucked up _more_."

* * *

_Author's Notes_: ... I just. I don't really have any words.

It's been so long since I updated this. I'm really sorry to everyone who's been waiting. I got distracted by RPing, life, other things... and so, even though I've had this chapter planned out in its entirety in my head for ages, it took me this long to get around to writing and posting it. I'm sorry. I can promise, though, that this fic isn't dead, and I really hope to update more than once before Christmas, and wrap it up early next year (we have PLOT now! Exciting (for me), lol), so... I don't know. On the plus side, I know where the fic is going, I know how it ends, it's just a matter of getting there.

At this point, many thanks for _Drakyndr_a, who never stopped asking about this fic on MSN_, Aki1_ and _Cat's Uk_e for always offering silent report, and anonymous reviewer rr for giving me the last push I needed to SIT DOWN AND FINISH IT, DAMN.

And of course, many thanks to everyone who reviewed, which is,** luckless-is-me, SavTheRipper, Drakyndra, yumerin, Shirogiku, doodle808, nuttin2seehur, UndineAlice, gina, VampirePrinssess, jadedfox2, Atheist1, L. Lamperouge, Allora Gale, samiam13, Cat's Uke, The Walker of Dreams, flamesorcceress, cmcj, nachan, Ni-chan9, Algea, hislittlerobin, blackwingsgreeneyes, Rea, Boo-Boo, Storm's Pride, Lovegranted**, and** rr**.

A few notes regarding this chapter:

- So, the story's location has now been determined as Milwaukie, Oregon. The reason being that I wanted it to be a town small enough that most people of any one age group knew each other, but big enough not to feel like a village. With a population of 20,000 Milwaukie fit the bill. And Oregon is nice, lol. (I grew up close to a town of 20k, and I'd always wanted to recreate that feeling in this fic.

- A few of the running gags continue. Don't worry, Rolo is eventually going to be treated more nicely... eventually.

- O HAI PLOT. Yes, there was a whole lot of plot in this chapter, wasn't there? I mean, relative to the LOLZ PIZZA BOY this fic was in the first few chapters. As some of you might be expecting, there will be a bit of angst in this fic. But overall, I feel like it would be too much of a departure from the origins of this LOLfic to butter on the angst too heavily, so I'll try to always balance the more serious stuff with something lighter and funnier.

- If you like this fic, may I suggest you check out _Crimson Thread_? It's a co-writing project between me and Aki1 (and the source of one of the aforementioned distractions), and it features the Lelouch from this fic, or a slightly adjusted version of him. That fic is a lot darker, though. Also, it already has porn. (Wheeeeee? :D)

- Lastly, to Lelouch: you're such an idiot. I love you anyway. XD

Aaaand, on a little side note: I had promised to review-respond to everyone, and then I didn't. In... a slight attempt at a defense, it wasn't that I wasn't going to, I got some weird error message when I tried to review-reply, like, 'no longer valid' O.o (even when I tried to respond on the day I got the review), so I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THAT HAPPENED, KIDS, NONE. Um.

I can only say I'll try again this chapter. I'm really happy about every review, and it keeps me writing. I feel like, together, we can finish this lolpizzaboy/lolangst/lolwhatisthis fic.

...:D

Til next time~!


End file.
